


Stars in the Deep

by dragonashes



Series: Stars in the Deep [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous Age Differences, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, One-Sided Relationship, Relationship Confusion, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-11-29 21:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11449503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonashes/pseuds/dragonashes
Summary: For the past five years, Frisk has done her best for monsterkind.  She's worked and sacrificed and bartered and begged, but monsters are now integrated into the human world.  She wouldn't trade that for anything.But things are changing, now.  Frisk is growing up.  Going back to when things were simple isn't an option for her, so what's a girl to do whenfeelingsstart happening?





	1. Skeletons on the Roof

Frisk dreams of stars.

It comes as a surprise to her; she has lived on the surface her whole life, not counting that one harrowing day in the Underground as a child.  For the past five years she has shared that experience with her monster family.  The stars form a lovely backdrop to her life, but they remain just that; there’s no reason why they should dominate her dreams.

The monsters were all initially intrigued by the stars - so different from the luminescent crystals that decorate the ceiling of the Underground - but the novelty has faded somewhat over the years.  There are exceptions, of course.  Notably, the skeleton brothers hold a stargazing party every month on the roof of the house they built at the base of Mount Ebott.  Attendance dwindled as monsters moved farther away from their old home, but there’s still a loyal contingent that makes the trip.

Frisk finds it harder every month, but she is still DETERMINED to spend time with her best friends.  As homework levels and ambassadorial duties increase, she sometimes entertains the idea of skipping...just once.  And yet without fail, every month, she finds herself smooshed into the back of Toriel’s old minivan with Asgore, heading up to the skeleton brothers’ home.

Truthfully, she does enjoy herself.  Papyrus has branched out after discovering that there is more than one cooking show aboveground so his food has gradually become quite good.  The potluck tradition, though, was established long before his food became...well, edible.  Toriel always makes butterscotch-cinnamon pies for memory’s sake, with the occasional snail pie thrown into the mix.  Undyne, Alphys, Asgore, and Grillby all bring their favorite foods, though those tend to change a bit.

The evening always begins with board games, the weirder the better.  Dear, sweet Alphys - ever the nerd - once brought a tabletop RPG.  Papyrus put all his character’s points into Charisma and tried to talk down every enemy in the tutorial scenario, despite Frisk’s hesitant explanations of the combat system.  Asgore, who wound up being the game master, smiled sadly but allowed the interactions.

Papyrus still doesn’t understand why Alphys never brings the “TALKING GAME” back.

After board games interspersed with snacking, everyone heads out onto the roof of the brothers’ home.  It is probably the safest roof in the country: Papyrus built and installed a safety railing around the edge, and there are handrails running across the commonly-traversed areas.  If all else fails, both brothers are capable of catching their guests with magic.

Still, everyone uses the buddy system.  Toriel and Asgore always lumber up first, holding hands and ‘testing for weak spots,’ sticking to the extra-extra-reinforced areas.  Not to be outdone, Undyne tosses Alphys up (usually before the king gives the all-clear), then pole-vaults up using a spear.  Papyrus either gets caught up in the chaos or, when MK stops by, carries the little guy up the ladder.  After all, handrails a little less handy to someone without arms.

Grillby and his niece sit right on the peak of the roof so Fuku can feel special and tall, and the pair usually winds up squished between the enthusiastic former and current members of the Royal Guard.  Frisk and Sans bring up the rear, mostly because Frisk is a little scared of heights and partly because Sans is so lazy (though Sans always takes full blame), and they huddle on the edge of the roof near the ladder.

Then...stargazing.

Mount Ebott is not a lone mountain, but one on the edge of a vast range.  The geography isn’t conducive to large cities.  The brightest source of manmade light to be seen is a distant glow from a city almost three hours’ drive away.  The darkness around them is thick and all-encompassing, like the void.

The stars, though - the stars look like dust and diamonds.  On good nights there are faint echoes of color through the sky, highlighting the constellations like huge underlying waves of magic.  Sans knows what causes this - Frisk is pretty sure he knows all the stars by name, too, even the ones that only have weird strings of letters and numbers as names - but she herself never bothers to remember.  It’s easier to curl into Sans’s inexplicably soft belly and feel it jiggle as he laughs, then listen to his (tired...so very, very tired...) voice as he explains the sky again.

Everyone heads home in twos and threes, depending on their schedules.  Usually Undyne and Alphys head out first; Undyne is an absurdly early riser, and though she can operate on very little sleep she is enthusiastic about keeping herself “in tip-top shape.”  Grillby and Fuku head out next, accompanied by MK when his parents can’t pick him up.

Toriel, Asgore, and Frisk always leave last.  Sometimes Frisk can bargain her way into sharing Papyrus’s bedtime story before leaving, just so she can hear Sans’s voice some more.  It sounds even better when he reads to Papyrus than it does when he talks about stars; it has more energy, more _life._

Plus, he does the funny voices.  Frisk may be in her senior year of high school now, but the funny voices are still _the absolute best_ and she would gladly brag about them to everyone she knows if it wouldn’t embarrass Sans so much.  (It’s tempting to do so anyways, sometimes.  He’s great, but he knows _exactly_ how to get on her nerves.)

After they arrive home and Toriel tucks her into bed, Frisk always dreams of stars: endless lights in the void, going on to eternity, and the rough warmth of a familiar voice under her ear telling her all their names like they’re old friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please mind the tags. Things are going to get interesting.
> 
> Fun fact of the chapter: this is the first thing I've posted in present tense. It's technically a prologue, but AO3's formatting doesn't really give me that option, so "Chapter 1" it is. The rest of the story is written in past tense, and yes, I'm aware of the discrepancy.


	2. Busy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frisk always enjoys a nice, relaxing evening with friends, with absolutely no allusions to past or future events of an ominous nature.
> 
> Everything is going to be fine.

Frisk sighed, trying to free her fingers from the overly-long sweater sleeves.  *But Mom,* she signed, *I have so much homework tonight!*

“Nonsense, my child,” Toriel said, without looking, as she rolled Frisk’s sleeves up.  (Frisk was pretty sure she made the sweaters oversized just to have an excuse to roll the sleeves up.)  “I know you’re looking forward to this.  You do every month.  Besides, tomorrow is Saturday of the weekend.  You shall have plenty of time to do your homework.  You have science, yes?  Perhaps Sans and Alphys could help you.”

She tried to protest again, but Toriel had already turned around and headed down the stairs and Frisk didn’t want to use her voice.  She readjusted her sleeves.  It was absolutely adorable that Toriel still helped her dress, but at eighteen years old it was  _ really not necessary _ .  She wondered, not for the first time, how quickly she was ageing compared to Asriel.  Toriel and Asgore had raised Chara for a few years, but it clearly wasn’t long enough to give a good impression of the developmental differences between boss monsters and humans.

Then again, Toriel ran a school; it was probably just overactive motherly instincts.

“There you are, my child!”  Asgore - surprisingly soft-footed for a monster of his size - ambushed Frisk into a hug as soon as she turned the corner at the bottom of the staircase.  “Your mother and I were worried you would not wish to attend.  I am so glad you have decided to put aside your studies for the evening to join your friends.  Though I am proud of your diligence, it pains me to see you working so much with so little rest.”

*It’s my senior year of high school, Dad,* Frisk signed once she was back on solid ground.  *It’s like drill camp.  If I can survive this, I can survive anything.*  He looked worried at that, so she gave her father a cheeky wink.  She smiled when he chuckled; living with her and Mom had improved his sense of humor dramatically.  She made a mental note to avoid morbid humor, though.  It looked like her dad was going through a bad phase.

“Nevertheless, I am pleased to see you happy.”

There were no words in any language Frisk knew to convey the warmth that soaked through her, so she settled for throwing herself back into Asgore’s arms and whispering a quiet “Love you, Dad” to his belly.

The honk of the minivan interrupted the hug far too early, but Asgore patted Frisk gently on the back (nearly knocking her over) and scooped up her backpack in his paw.  No one wanted to keep Toriel waiting.

The ride out to Sans and Papyrus’s house was as uncomfortable as ever.  Asgore...didn’t really fit properly into a human-sized vehicle, but Toriel wanted a minivan and he was good at making himself fit into spaces too small for him.

It was a tighter squeeze than it had been when Frisk was thirteen, but she was still able to crawl into the back with her dad.  As always, both her parents protested and asked her to sit up front, but it was more a part of the routine than a genuine request.  After all, the front seat was already covered in enough neatly stacked pies to feed every monster in town, and her blanket and pillow were waiting for her in the back seat.

Toriel brought her CD of showtunes (personally selected by Alphys and Frisk) so there was plenty of music to sing along to.  She always hummed disapprovingly at any lyrics she thought were too scandalous for Frisk to hear, and Asgore always mixed up the words, but the family belted out the songs anyways.  It was one of Frisk’s favorite family traditions.

Despite being mostly winding mountain roads, the drive was only about an hour long.  Both Frisk and Asgore popped their backs and stretched like kittens once they finally reached the skeleton brothers’ homes, but Toriel somehow never felt the need to.  Frisk couldn’t wait until her parents finally let her get her driver’s license, if the driver’s seat was so comfortable.

“HUMAN FRISK!  PLEASE DO NOT MAKE THOSE SOUNDS WITH YOUR HUMAN BONES!  IT IS VERY UNSETTLING, BECAUSE IT SOUNDS LIKE THEY ARE BREAKING!  PLEASE DO NOT BREAK YOUR BONES!  IT WOULD BE VERY BAD FOR YOU.”

*I’m fine, Papyrus,* Frisk signed, wincing when her knuckles cracked a little.  *Sorry.  It’s normal.  We’ve talked about this.  I can’t help it that my bones make sounds, but it feels better when I get the pops out.*

There had been many attempts to explain the real cause of “human bone sounds” to Papyrus, including multimedia productions on human biology with a focus on skeletal structure and cartilage (complete with one squishy human as a live prop), but it never really sunk in.

“I KNOW THIS, BUT IT DISTRESSES ME ANYWAYS.”

Frisk apologized with a hug, and all was forgotten.

As Papyrus pranced off to welcome the local royalty with “GREAT DISPLAYS OF FRIENDSHIP, YOUR MAJESTIES,” Frisk wandered into the house.  It was late autumn, and the doors and windows were open to let in the fresh mountain breeze.  The house certainly smelled better for it; the usual odor of ketchup and smelly socks was notably missing.  Someone had laid soft rugs down on the tile floors to keep out the chill, so Frisk kicked her shoes off before heading into the kitchen.

“Heya, punk!  I thought I heard Paps greeting someone.”  Undyne was wrestling with something - a robotic cooler? - that appeared to be filled with cups of her latest obsession: smoothies.  Frisk mentally steeled herself for the smoothies.  Undyne had a habit of adding extra ingredients in fits of PASSION, and ‘racing’ the blender to see who (or what) could pulverize ingredients the quickest.  The lumps were...really something.

She waited until Undyne disentangled herself from the cooler to give her a hug, and was thankful when the hug did  _ not _ turn into a suplex.  *Hey, Undyne!* she signed as passionately as possible.  *How did you get here before us?*

“she and alphys have been camped out here since yesterday morning,” came a tired voice from somewhere under the kitchen table.   _ “early _ yesterday morning.”

“That’s right!!  You guys beat us here for fifteen of the last thirty stargazing parties!  There was no way we’d let you beat us here on this all-important TIEBREAKER PARTY!”

“W-we took a few d-days off of work a-and had a sleepover.  Um...w-without telling a-anyone f-first.”  Alphys peeked around the corner from the living room, her eyes darting between Frisk and the television.  Frisk could hear the music from some popular anime involving giant swords, and could guess what her friends had been doing for the past 36 hours or so.

“Yeah!  That way it’s a SUPER SURPRISE!”  Undyne pumped her fist in the air, narrowly missing the hanging kitchen light she always forgot about.  “This means Alphys and I are CLEARLY the better friends!!”

Despite losing this epic battle of friendship, Frisk was filled with DETERMINATION to do better next time.  She signed as much to Undyne when she congratulated her on that victory.

“Aww, punk, c’mere.  You’re a pretty good friend too.  Not as good as me ‘n Alphys,  _ obviously, _ but pretty good all the same.”

Frisk patted the back of her friend’s leather jacket until the latter remembered her struggle with the mechanized cooler and dropped the squishy human back to the floor.  Said human panted, regaining the breath that had been squeezed out of her, before heading under the kitchen table to find her other host.

Sans had inexplicably threaded himself through the bottom rungs of a few chairs and was lying across them like a hammock.  He had come down there prepared: there were small containers of water sausages, buns, and condiments waiting to be assembled into ‘dogs and hot cats.  A sloppy cardboard sign declared the space “the best undertable food stall in the world,” and Frisk  - after a moment of contemplation - agreed that this must be true.  There was a smudge on the side of his mouth that suggested he’d helped himself to the supplies at some point.

“hey, kiddo,” Sans said.  “want a ‘dog?”

*Wait for dinner,* Frisk signed, eyeing the water sausages with suspicion.

“if you’re sure.  these are fresh, though.  your dad helped me pick them this morning.”

Frisk bounced in place, her head almost hitting the underside of the table.  *You did it?  It worked?*

“heh.  sure did.  it takes a greenhouse, some fancy magic, a really finicky temperature control unit, and a gardener who knows his stuff, but it looks like we can finally bring some of our plants topside.”

Frisk squealed a little and debated trying to hug Sans, but the chair legs were a formidable obstacle.  She settled for an enthusiastic double thumbs-up.

A shriek of outrage from the direction of the kitchen was followed by a metallic boom.  She hoped Alphys had remembered not to put explosives or lethal weapons into the cooler, but it was always a toss-up.  Sans didn’t look terribly concerned, so she decided not to worry too much.

*What do you think you’ll bring up next?*

“probably echo flowers, though Asgore wants to bring up golden flowers.  don’t tell him i told you, though.  i thinks he wants to surprise you ‘n your mom.”

*I won’t say a word,* she signed cheekily.  The skeleton chuckled.

“SAAAAAAANS!”

“whelp, i guess we’d better go join everyone else, huh?  oh, and don’t forget to clean up your mess.”

He vanished.

Frisk sighed and began gathering up the plastic containers that comprised the Best Undertable Food Stall in the World.  Sans was so lazy sometimes.

“My child!”

Frisk turned to see her mom standing in the doorway.  She gave a nervous wave with one stack of boxes, but her hands were too full to sign.

“You’ll ruin your dinner if you have ‘dogs before dinner!  And where did you even get them?”

Frisk turned to Undyne - who should have, at the very least, heard Sans’s side of the conversation - but the former Captain of the Royal Guard was engaged in honorable combat with her cooler.  She had spears out and everything.  Frisk thought she heard theme music playing faintly in the background.

She avoided  _ that _ whole mess and set the boxes on the counter.  *Sans was showing me his latest food stall,* she signed.

Toriel shook her head disapprovingly.  “That boy has the worst diet.  Well, at least let me help you put the food away.  I must take care of my pies as well.”

Undyne had wrestled the cooler into submission by the time the pies and the ‘dog supplies were safely stowed in the fridge.  The cooler also happened to be in flaming pieces, but Undyne assured everyone that they were flames of PASSION and therefore entirely normal.  Frisk helped her move the pieces outside and hose them down to keep the PASSION from spreading too aggressively to the more docile parts of the house.

Grillby, Fuku, MK and Napstablook showed up soon after, and carefully avoided the dripping Undyne and Frisk.  Grillby brought his latest big hit, Ghost Pepper Poppers, which had been artfully arranged on a platter by Fuku.  Alphys squee’d over the vegetable shapes Fuku had cut out to ornament the arrangement.

“Want to try one?”  The fire girl asked Frisk.

*Sure.*  She carefully took a Ghost Pepper Popper from the tray.  Her fingers tingled as they held it, despite the breading.  She couldn’t remember where ghost peppers fell on the range of spicy peppers, but she suspected they were fairly high on the scale.

It was tear-inducing.

Both Papyrus and Undyne yelled slightly worried encouragement at her as she tried to regain normal breathing and swallowing functions.  Toriel panicked for about five seconds, then immediately ran to the fridge for a glass of milk.  Frisk could barely make out Asgore, loitering in the back of the room, looking sick and wringing his huge hands.  Grillby was nearby, signing nervous assurance that everything was fine and the poppers were safe for human consumption.

“easy, kiddo,” Sans said.  Frisk couldn’t tell when he had taken over holding her up, but she guessed it was around the time Papyrus and Undyne started some sort of wrestling battle.

The milk he poured into her mouth helped...a little.  It certainly made things more bearable.  It took quite a few tissues to clean her nose and eyes (especially after she accidentally touched her eye with the hand she’d used to hold the popper) but Toriel had an apparently endless supply in her Mom Purse.

“i have a burning question for ya,” he said when Frisk was finally able to breathe normally.  “what made you think that was a good idea?  i know you lava good snack, but i think you’ve met your match.”

Papyrus and Undyne groaned.  Toriel and Sans were in stitches.  Grillby tried to console Asgore.  Fuku, MK, and Frisk shared a look that said that the adults in their lives clearly couldn’t be trusted by themselves.

“hey, hey tori, knock knock.”

“Wh-who’s there?”

“boo.”

“Boo who?”

“aww, why are  _ you _ cryin’, tori?   _ you _ didn’t eat the ghost pepper.”

Only the appearance of Alphys, bearing a peace offering in the form of Monopoly, kept Papyrus and Undyne from making a serious attempt on Sans’s life.

Monopoly was a recurring part of the stargazing party tradition.  Everyone had a dedicated token.  Papyrus, of course, claimed the car first, then felt a little bad and offered it to anyone who wanted such a cool  piece.  No one had the heart to take him up on the offer.

Since there weren’t enough original pieces to go around, they used pieces from other games and tiny knick-knacks the group had accumulated for that purpose.  To keep the game at a reasonable length, some of them teamed up.

“we’ll take the wheelbarrow.”

“WHO IS ‘WE,’ BROTHER?  I ALREADY HAVE MY FANCY CAR.”

“nah, you got that covered, bro.  i’m gonna keep an eye on frisk.”

“Why the wheelbarrow?”  Asgore asked.

“i’m too lazy to walk.  frisk is gonna have to push me.”

Undyne took a swipe at Sans’s cranium.  “That’s no way to treat a lady, punk!”

“heh, frisk isn’t…”

“DON’T FINISH THAT, BONE BOY!”

*It’s fine,* Frisk signed.  *We’ll be the best team!  We’ll beat you all to dust.*

Frisk won the dice roll and passed the dice to Sans (DETERMINED to force him to participate), but...hesitated.  Her friend had an odd look in his eye sockets.  A quick glance around showed that everyone else was focused on the board, excited for the beginning of the game.

Frisk rolled for herself the first few rounds.

To her surprise, Sans contributed more to the game than he usually did when playing alone.  He made suggestions under his breath with an almost nervous energy that was unlike him.  Around the time they gained control of Park Place and Boardwalk and began building up their corporate empire in earnest, Frisk noticed Toriel giving Sans worried glances.  She hoped it was simply because of their unusually aggressive playstyle.

Darkness fell before anyone was eliminated, so they tallied their score.  Frisk and Sans, to no one’s surprise, came in first.  Their reward was the first two slices of Toriel’s pie - a prize Frisk was quite happy with - and their pick of spots on the roof.  Sans, though...Sans was staring off into nothingness, his phalanges tight on the edges of his plate.

Frisk tried to catch his attention.  *Sans, are you alright?*

He flinched a little.  “what?  oh...yeah, m’fine, kiddo.  just a little jumpy.  been working too many shifts down in the old city, i guess.  it’s the  _ core  _ reason for a lot of my stress.  heh.  i guess i just need to power through it.”

Frisk smiled at the puns, half-hearted though they were.  *Are you sure I didn’t do anything?  You’ve been acting strange since earlier.*

“...tori taught you better grammar than that.  don’t get sloppy, or you’ll end up a deadbeat like me.”

There was something awfully self-deprecating in his tone.  Frisk had only heard that from him a few times, and never in company.  Grillby, the only one close enough to hear, looked over at them with a concerned look.

*Please don’t say that, Sans.  You work harder than most people I know!*  No one knew how many jobs Sans actually had, not even Papyrus.  Frisk had heard of him working down in the Core taking shifts keeping the old power generator running, plus he had his job in the Royal Lab in Ebott City.  He occasionally sold hot dogs (actual hot dogs, not ‘dogs) from a brightly painted stand in Asriel Memorial Park, across the street from Frisk’s school.  He did...something else for her dad that drew in a paycheck on top of his lab work, though neither he nor Asgore would tell anyone what it was.  Who knew what else he did?

It made Frisk feel guilty, sometimes, complaining to the skeleton brothers about her school workload and ambassadorial duties.  Both of them worked so hard, and they never seemed bothered by how busy they were.

Sans just sighed and took another bite of pie.

He was quiet that night after they all settled down onto the roof.  Frisk decided to give him some space.  She stayed close to him and away from the edge, but didn’t curl up against him like she normally did.  He seemed...aloof, somehow.  Lost in his thoughts, like he was reliving something in his own mind that no one else knew about.

She had been in that position before.  While she had been responsible about her LOADs since she got that power in the Underground (only LOADing if she died) and had never tested that RESET button, she had nightmares about what could have happened if she hadn’t been so careful.  The dreams were too vivid and too consistent  _ not _ to be real, sometimes.  After a little digging she had come across something called multiverse theory, the idea that multiple (and perhaps infinite) copies of the same world existed simultaneously.  Far-fetched, maybe, but was it any more so than cheating death by moving backwards through time?  It was sickening to think about other Frisks, somewhere out in other planes of existence, RESETting and murdering all her family and friends again and again and  _ again. _

Some of her worst nightmares were of Sans.

_ (“our reports showed a massive anomaly in the timespace continuum. timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting…”) _

She suspected that he’d had studied time at some point, as evidenced by the quantum joke book from his old house in Snowdin.  She wondered: how much did  _ this  _ Sans know?  Did he, too, receive odd visions of other timelines?  Did this Sans, like some of the ones from her nightmares, study long charts of esoteric mathematical calculations, cataloguing dead timelines with empty eye sockets?

For five years she had watched her monster friends for any sign that they were also tormented by alternate copies of themselves, but...nothing had come to light.  If they knew, her friends and family were very good at hiding it.  It had crossed Frisk’s mind once or twice to test Sans -  _ I am the legendary fartmaster! _ \- but she couldn’t...couldn’t  _ do _ that to him.  What if he  _ didn’t _ know?  He was smart; he’d be able to deduce what she was talking about.  What if she caused him to suddenly remember other timelines?

What if he already did remember, and got angry with Frisk for hiding it for so long?

She flinched a little when she felt something settle around her shoulders.  Sans’s jacket.  It was soft and blue, much like the one he’d worn when she first met him, and she snuggled into it gratefully.  The fall weather near Mount Ebott was mild during the day, but it had grown cold enough to be uncomfortable.

*Thanks,* she signed.  Sans was looking up at the stars, and didn’t acknowledge her.

“Thanks,” she whispered, wincing at the sound of her voice.  She like a frog who’d been gargling rocks.

Sans snapped his head down, eye sockets huge and dark.  For a tense moment she thought he was going to say something, something that would change everything, but his expression slowly relaxed.  When he looked back up at the stars, he almost looked like his normal self.  “heh.  no problem, kiddo.  gotta keep ya from catching a cold, since icy you didn’t remember your jacket this time.”

“I’m glad I have an ice guy like you to help me out.”

“you weren’t so chili earlier.”

“That’s because I was around friends.  It’s easy to be warm when you’re not ice-olated.”

“i dunno, some of them have a cold reaction to puns.”

Barely muffled laughter from farther up the roof was accompanied by a loud groan.  “SANS?  ARE YOU DESTROYING THE STARGAZING PARTY WITH PUNS?”

“if you need me to give you some space, just let me know.”

“COMET ME BRO!”

A stunned silence fell over the crowd.

“THAT IS WHAT ALL THE COOL KIDS SAY!”

Toriel, Sans, and Frisk nearly fell off the roof in laughter.  Undyne’s screech of utter betrayal echoed off the mountain, and MK babbled something about being caught between too many awesome people.

Frisk glanced up at the stars, her worries gone for the moment.  Everything was going to be just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact of the chapter: I'm primarily a short story writer, so this chapter was written in 3-4 different pieces. I also skipped around a lot when writing the story, so I had strange notes to myself with things I wanted to add. I'm 99% sure I removed all of them.


	3. Missed Connection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Someone's_ curiosity was piqued, and something good comes of it! Things can only get better from here!

Sans started visiting after that.  It wasn’t frequent - not at first - but he would stop in once or twice during the week to hang out.  Sometimes he brought Papyrus, but usually he was alone.

That was the strangest thing of all.

It was fun, though.  Sans knew  _ so many things _ that Frisk had never dreamed of.  He knew answers to questions she had never thought to ask.  She wondered if it got tiring, having all that information in his head when he didn’t appear to be doing anything with it aside from helping her with her homework.  She didn’t think he’d be happy if she asked.

She really, really wanted to make him happy.  Frisk didn’t know what had prompted him to start showing up after that particular stargazing party, but she wasn’t going to complain.  It was unbelievably nice, talking to him.  She didn’t have to pretend like she did for so many other people in her life.  He was a cool guy, yes, but in general he was just...too lazy to judge.

_ (“that’s then.  now.  you will be judged.”) _

The irony of the situation was not lost on her.

Even if they never really talked about the past, they didn’t shy away from it like most monsters did.  Occasionally Frisk wondered if that was a good thing.  Sometimes, Sans would look  _ through _ her like he was looking for someone else behind her eyes.  Sometimes, she caught him checking his phone like he wasn’t sure whether time had really passed or not.  Sometimes...sometimes she would look at him  _ just right _ , and something inside her would tremble in fear.

It didn’t happen often, thankfully.  There were far more memories of science experiments and pie baking, math homework and dramatic monologues, critical essays and warm, sweet tea.  Still…

Sans gradually started coming over more often, so Frisk decided he must enjoy being around her as well.  She wasn’t entirely sure why - aside from their shared past, she wasn’t very interesting - but she was grateful for the company.  Her duties as Ambassador of Monsters meant she didn’t have very many human friends.  It wasn’t because humans were awful (there were some, but they were few and easily...discouraged) but because most young adults, Frisk found, were intimidated by her.  She was in a position of international authority, and they didn’t know how to relate to her on that level.

It was fine.  There were enough friendly people that school was pleasant.  She had people to ‘hang out with’ occasionally, when she wasn’t busy and Sans wasn’t over.  Despite not having close friends, she was grateful for the opportunity to observe and learn about other humans.

Adults, she noticed, weren’t really  _ that _ much different from her classmates.  They liked to pretend they were, but after she caught Ambassador Malone sharing cat memes with that new embassy staff member from Ecuador she didn’t believe a word of it.

Sans laughed when she told him that.

It...surprised her to hear him laugh, and that in turn made her feel guilty.  He made so many jokes, but rarely laughed.  Frisk wondered why she hadn’t noticed before.   Did that make her a bad friend?

_ Was _ she Sans’s friend?  He was so hard to read sometimes, and he rarely answered questions when asked directly, but...

...She hoped so.

Her classmates thought so, when she told them (in a roundabout way, naturally, in one of those painfully transparent stories beginning with “So, I have a friend who has a maybe-friend…”).  One had even asked if they were dating.  Frisk thought hard about that.  She’d only gone on two dates (three, if one counted that incident with Sans in the MTT Restaurant) and those had been  _ years _ ago.  She wondered if Papyrus would be willing to let her borrow his dating handbook during the next stargazing party.  It would be a logistical nightmare to get it from him without Sans noticing, but…

...but then Sans  _ changed his pattern _ , and Frisk wasn’t sure of  _ anything _ anymore.

Of all the things to do, he showed up at her school to  _ walk her home _ .  Frisk, aged eighteen and living just under three blocks from school, hadn’t had anyone walk her home since the first day of high school, almost three and a half years ago.

She wasn’t sure what to make of the gesture.  He didn’t do anything...weird, or awkward, or anything.  He didn’t offer an explanation.  He just showed up and walked back to her house, hands tucked deep into his pockets, rambling about how nice the weather was and what kind of pie Toriel was going to be baking and had she heard that new song on the radio?  It was surprisingly...nice.  Frisk revelled in the warm and fuzzy feeling the whole evening, even after Sans took a shortcut back home.

Her classmates teased her mercilessly the next day.  They called Sans her  _ ‘boooooooy _ friend’ and asked her all sorts of uncomfortable questions.  She insisted that he  _ wasn’t _ , that he was just a friend, and that set off a second round of teasing led by those who remembered her story.

“Okay, he’s a friend,” she told them, out loud in deference to those who couldn’t sign.  “But...nothing else!  I mean, I’m  _ human _ and he’s a monster.  Why would he even be attracted to me at all?”

Frisk thought long and hard over that during her (Sansless) evening.  Sure, he had been visiting more often, but...that didn’t mean anything, right?  Monster culture was a bit lax on what, exactly, constituted ‘dating,’ but Sans would have told her if they  _ were _ dating...right?  Or was she supposed to just  _ know? _  How could she tell without making everything seem  _ weird? _

Did she even  _ want _ to date Sans?

The answer to that was...complicated.  Frisk was aware that she was more mature than most of the other kids in her class in many ways, and not just because she was legally an adult.  She had never  _ quite _ fit in properly, in the way that children who have been through horrific situations and are forced to grow up far too quickly can never truly go back to being innocent.  She had been changed by her experiences in the Underground and...before, and while she was grateful, it meant that she couldn’t take her classmates’ gossip and celebrity crushes and “emergency shopping sessions” as seriously as they seemed to.  Her ambassadorial duties only reinforced the need to grow up, to shoulder as much of the burden of politics as she could as her parents tried to adjust to an ever-shifting human culture.

With all that maturity, it seemed to Frisk at times that she had skipped over a few important developmental milestones.  She had never experienced what her friends called a ‘crush,’ had never dated anyone for more than ten minutes tops, had never been kissed.  (Her parents did a cute little nose-nuzzling thing to her that probably counted as their version of a kiss, but that was  _ different. _  They were  _ parents. _ )

Besides...how old  _ was _ Sans?  She’d gathered that he didn’t remember the war between humans and monsters, but knowing that he was less than 200 years old didn’t narrow things down  _ that _ much.  The fact that he knew  _ so much _ more than she did suggested higher education, but she had no frame of reference for the exact level.  He could have been a genius with a high school education or a retired professor with a PhD.

She’d asked her mom, but that hadn’t been helpful.  Toriel hadn’t heard of the skeleton brothers before moving to the Ruins...but she’d lived in the ruins for a hundred years before she and Sans started telling each other jokes through her door, when he first took his job as a Snowdin sentry.  He’d been there for two years when Frisk fell into the Underground.

In hindsight, Toriel had been, perhaps, not the best person to ask.  Frisk knew from her history lessons that boss monsters are effectively immortal until they have children; she also knew that Asgore had been King of Monsters for nearly three hundred years before even meeting Toriel.  In the pictures she’d found of that first meeting, Toriel looked remarkably young; not so young that she wore stripes, but much younger than Asgore.  Clearly, monsters (or, at least, boss monsters) didn’t view age in quite the same way humans did.

All that aside, Frisk realized that she  _ could _ see herself dating Sans.  Sure, he was awkward and lazy and ate way too much ketchup and junk food and occasionally put whoopie cushions on her chair in homeroom, but he was remarkably sweet.  Over the five years they’d been on the surface she had come to rely on him for a lot.  He was a constant in her life in ways other monsters...weren’t.

That’s what dating was, right?

Frisk wondered how being human affected the situation.  She was aware of certain realities of her biology, from her classmates and her education, but she had never thought to apply that knowledge to herself.  When living among monsters, it just didn’t seem all that important.

It was with great embarrassment and no little trepidation that Frisk broached the subject of dating with her dad.  He was definitely the more romantic of her parents and was less likely to let it slip in conversation that she’d asked.  Plus, it made him feel important in her life.  It was something, Frisk thought, that he didn’t feel enough.

He came through amazingly.  He was a little...vague in some areas, but Frisk couldn’t tell if that was because he thought she was too young to know (despite being 18) or because he wasn’t sure how humans differed from monsters.  He didn’t discuss the emotional side nearly as much as her school friends did.  Instead, he focused on practical things: the sorts of things monsters did on dates, what certain gifts and actions meant, how they considered the different stages of a relationship, and the social implications of choosing a partner of such and such a race or status.  It was a purely Asgore lecture: a mix of wisdom gained from hundreds of years as king and the experience of a husband and a father.

For all that, Frisk found herself no less confused.

“Is there someone you are crushed upon?”  Asgore asked, face completely serious.

*I...kinda have a crush, yeah.  I think.  I’m just not sure...where - sorry; what - he thinks of me.*

“I am sure that your young man would tell you if you asked him.”

*But...what if he really doesn’t like me the same way?  What if asking makes things weird between us?*

“Then at least you will have an honest assessment of where you stand.  All relationships - even friendships - can only grow in honesty.  Yes, it may make you both uncomfortable for a time, but if your friendship is strong enough for you to consider something more then I believe you can overcome such an obstacle.”  His smile took on a painful twist.  Frisk was reminded of the consequences of her father’s honesty in his own relationship, and how he was still trying to remedy it a hundred years later.

*I see.  Well...maybe I can ask him.  When the time is right.*

“Tact is something I’m sure he’ll appreciate, even if he - and his brother - rarely practice it themselves.”

Frisk thought of Sans and Papyrus.  *Yeah.*

“Perhaps the next time we go over to their home?  The next monthly party is next week.  You regularly spend time together at those...golly, are you alright, little one?  I don’t believe that’s a natural color for your face.”

Frisk rolled the collar of her turtleneck up to mask her hot cheeks.  She hadn’t realized it was so  _ obvious. _  Her hands felt stiff, and she couldn’t keep signing.  “I...I don’t...how did you  _ know? _ ”

“It is hardly a secret who you spend time with.  The fact that he has made the effort to reach out to you bodes well for your hopes, I’d say.  Just...do be careful, my child.  I would reckon that few truly understand Sans.  I doubt he truly understands himself.  If, however, the two of you come to an arrangement...well, my only goal is to see you happy.  You have my support.”

Frisk, not sure what to say, settled for giving her father a big hug.  For a handful of shining, peaceful moments her world consisted of fuzzy sweaters, the smell of tea and cinnamon, and unconditional love.

The peace didn’t last.

“Your boyfriend stopped by the school earlier,” one of her friends told her the following morning.  “I guess he remembers that I hang out with you and asked if I’d give you this.”

It was a folded piece of notebook paper.  “Did you read it?” she whispered.

“No.  Dude, that’d be rude.”

“Yeah.  Thanks.”

The note was short and to the point:

> frisk
> 
> gotta take care of some stuff, so i cant walk u home 2day.  b good.  see u soon kiddo.
> 
> x

X?  He signed his note with an X?  Was he being lazy, or did he know what it meant?

“Aww!  Dude, he gave you a hug!”

She turned around to find her friend looking unashamedly over her shoulder.  “I thought you said reading my note would be rude??”

“Reading it before I gave it to you, yeah.  This is fair game.”

The note went straight into her bag.

Hugs?  Was Sans  _ trying _ to confuse her?  Or...was he trying to make things clearer?

She didn’t have a chance to ask him for a few days.  She didn’t even have much of a chance to think for herself for a few days.  As it turned out, the Core was being prepared for integration with the electrical grid of a few nearby cities.  It wasn’t something she’d been involved with planning, not having the background to understand the technicalities, but as ambassador she was pulled out of class and into a furious round of meetings and photo ops as it became clear that the project was going to be a success.

And it  _ was _ a success.  Several cities around Mount Ebott had power shortages, which heavily affected the availability of technology.  Businesses, homes, factories, schools, and more had adapted to periodic blackouts and brownouts; utility companies had scrambled to find a solution for years.  The uptick in available power from the Core saved somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 jobs across the region, according to the team of squabbling economists who had taken over the Embassy’s conference room for the past few weeks.

So it was understandable that Sans was a  _ little _ busy with more important things than walking Frisk home from school.

When he did show back up, he was looking happier and more carefree than she’d seen him in a long time.  He announced himself with a whoopie cushion on her chair just as she was sitting down to join her friends for lunch.  Even though she and the rest of her friends hadn’t seen how it got there, she knew his modus operandi well enough.

It didn’t stop there.  When she opened her pencil case for her Civics class, a spring-loaded snake toy popped out and flew across the room.  Her pencils themselves all had clear nail polish on them.  In the hallways between classes she thought she felt someone tugging her braid, but when she turned around no one was there.  Her friends were no help; they were too busy laughing at the ‘kiss me’ signs that kept appearing pinned to her backpack.

When the final bell  _ finally _ rang, Frisk staggered out of the school.  Just outside the gate was a grinning skeleton, his little white eye-light-things twinkling like stars in a black sky.

It was almost enough to make her forgive him for the prank hell that her afternoon had been.   _ Almost. _

“heya,” he said.  “you look a little rattled.”

*Laugh it up, bone boy.  I know that was your fault.*

“what?  i’m just a lowly ‘dog salesman.  someone been messin’ with ya, kid?”

Frisk reached into her backpack and brought out the whoopie cushion.

“oh, hey!  i’ve been looking for that.  i don’t mind if ya borrow some of my joke stuff, but ask first next time, ‘kay?”

“SANS,” she growled.  She took a deep breath.  Why did she like this guy again?  *I’m glad you’re back.  I heard you did a lot of work on the Core project.*

“eh, i used to work on it a long time ago.  some of the systems haven’t been touched in years, and they wanted everyone who knew anything about the old place to be on-hand in case something went wrong.  they offered free food, and you know how i feel about free food.”

She did know.  It gave new meaning to his insistence on taking her out for meals in the Underground, even if she really didn’t get to eat anything.

*Still, I heard that you helped out a lot.  Having this go so smoothly made my job a lot easier.  So...thanks.*

“heh.  well, if it helped you out, frisk, then i guess it’s worth it, huh?”

She shot him a glance.  He had his hands in his pockets, looking carefree at first glance, but there was a weird tension to him.

He...didn’t call her by name, really.  Not unless they were in a crowd of people and yelling “hey, you” wouldn’t work.  He always called her “kid” or “kiddo” or “buddy” or “pal” or something similar.

She couldn’t help it; she blushed.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

One of her hands found their way into one of his, and to her surprise, he allowed it.  His palm, a malleable collection of bones mostly fused together, was warm and a little tingly from his magic.  The bones themselves were smooth and almost felt...soft, like there was something over the hard surface that was cushioning his hand from hers.

It felt nice.

Toriel greeted them at the door and ushered them into the kitchen, where she’d just pulled a pecan pie out of the oven.  She didn’t glance at their joined hands, but once Sans made his way over to his usual spot at the table her eyes met Frisk’s with a very telling look.

Frisk smiled back, nodding slightly.  She could feel herself blushing again.

“you okay?  call me nuts, but you look a little flushed.”

“N-no!  I’m fine!  Sorry.  Uh.  Oh!  Right!  I some physics homework, if you’re not burned out by all that work in the Core.”

“nah.  this is a nice change of pace.”

They worked through the assigned homework (the class was studying thermodynamics, conveniently enough) and a piece of pie each.  It was fascinating, watching Sans talk about science.  It was, if she was honest, one of the reasons she was suffering through both Physics B  _ and _ Chemistry B on top of the rest of her graduation requirements.  She didn’t need them for college - she was planning to major in political studies with a focus on international relations - but science was just so  _ interesting _ when Sans explained it.

“...and that’s why boltzmann’s constant was such a big deal for us working with the core.”

“Weird.  Cool, but weird.  I think I’ve got the basics - temperature and energy and entropy - but I think it’s the math that really gets to me.  Math really isn’t my strong suit.”

“believe it or not, i’m not a big fan of math either.”

Frisk took a bite of pie and switched to sign language.  *Bull.  You’ve been helping me with my math homework for years!*

“eh, high school math ‘round here really isn’t that complicated.  but higher-level stuff, like calculus?  no thanks.  i prefer to stick to the practical side of things.  sure, there’s math involved in physics, but you can see the end results, y’know?  you can do experiments, get your hands dirty, really dig into why the world works the way it does.  it’s-”

There was a loud crash and a “Sorry!” from the kitchen as Toriel dropped a pan of some kind.

“Are you okay, Mom?”  Frisk called, her eyes still fixed on the (now blushing) skeleton beside her.

“I’m wonderful, my child!  Thank you for asking!”  It was...probably okay?  She was just making pies for the stargazing party the next day; it couldn’t be too bad, right?

Frisk sat in silence for a moment, still watching Sans.  The way he spoke about science wasn’t the same way Papyrus spoke about cars or spaghetti, but his love of the topic still showed.  It was like he and the laws of thermodynamics were old friends who had been away for a while, and were just starting to learn about each other again.

It probably wasn’t true - she knew he worked on the Core on a regular basis, after all, despite his claims to the contrary - but there was still something almost childlike in the way he approached it.

“well!  uh.  sorry for getting carried away, there.  now, do you have chem homework too, or are you gonna move on to history?”

*Chemistry had a sub today; it was just a lecture.  I think I’ll take care of History or English next.  Thanks for helping, though.*

“no problem, ‘s cool.  hey, do ya mind if i look over your shoulder?”

*I’m tempted to say yes, but then I remember what happened this afternoon.*

“aww, c’mon frisky.  ya know ya love me.”  *Please?* he signed.

Frisk’s face turned pink again.  *Fine,* she signed without looking at him.

He looked over her shoulder and shamelessly punned about recent world events for over an hour as she tried to write up her report on major world treaties of the early 2000s.  She made a mental note to review her typing before turning it in; from Sans’s smirk, some of his puns had made it into her report.

*My history teacher doesn’t have a sense of humor,* she pouted.  *If I get marked down because she thinks I’m trying to be funny, I’ll blame you.*

“aww, her loss.  and don’t you mean  _ sans _ of humor?”

*That joke doesn’t work in sign language!*

He just laughed.

“welp, i’d better be off.  paps needs his bedtime story, and i’d hate to disappoint.”

“Okay.  Thanks for your help, Sans.”

“no probs.  see ya tomorrow.”  Frisk felt something on her head before he teleported out.

It took her a minute of staring wide-eyed at her mother (who was staring equally wide-eyed back at her) to realize that he’d pushed his teeth to her hair in a parody of a kiss.  Toriel clearly saw the realization cross Frisk’s face.

“It seems you have a paramour, my child,” she said with an absolutely wicked grin.  “Is that why he’s been frequenting my kitchen and eating my pies?”

“Mooom,” said child groaned, her face buried in her arms on the table.  “No one calls them ‘paramours’ anymore.”

“Hmm.  Would you prefer ‘boyfriend’ or ‘lover,’ then?”

“Urghpf!!”

“I am fairly certain  _ that _ is not a word to use in this circumstance.  Or at all, really.”

_ “Mom!!!” _

“Alright.  But truly, my child, I am happy that you seem to have found someone special.”

Frisk, face still buried, couldn’t help but smile.  It was a smile that even her truly sadistic English homework couldn’t erase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Happy story! What do you mean, "tags?"
> 
> Fun fact of the chapter: I did an inordinate amount of research into thermodynamics and ASL profanity. I can now say "bullshit" in American Sign Language, which I'm using as a rough equivalent for the sign language Frisk uses. (To be honest, though, the New Zealand Sign Language equivalent is more fun to do.)
> 
> Thanks to everyone for supporting this story! I'm so happy people are enjoying my poor attempts at sticking words together.


	4. The Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sans goes on a date, and Papyrus has something to say.

Papyrus hung up the phone, his brow furrowed.  “SANS!  ARE YOU FEELING WELL?  SANS?”

“what’s up, bro?”

He peered up the staircase, trying to catch a glimpse of his brother.  The end of the hallway right outside Sans’s door was always uncommonly dark, and despite being a skeleton made of _white bones_ he always blended right into the shadows.  It was probably space-time japes or something.

“I JUST GOT A CALL FROM LADY TORIEL.  SHE SAID THAT YOU CANCELLED YOUR TRADITIONAL HOMEWORK MEETING WITH FRISK.”

“uh...yeah, i did.”

“I AM CONCERNED.  YOU HAVE NOT MISSED A HOMEWORK MEETING IN MONTHS, EVER SINCE YOU TOOK TIME OFF TO WORK ON THE CORE.  ARE YOU FEELING WELL?”

“yeah, i’m fine, paps.”

“THEN ARE YOU BEING LAZY AGAIN?  REALLY, BROTHER, I THOUGHT YOU WERE DOING SO MUCH BETTER…”

“nah, bro.  i just...well, i have a date tonight.”

A real date?!?  Finally!!  Papyrus bounced in his boots, unable to stop the wiggle in his phalanges.  “THIS IS WONDERFUL!  I AM SO PLEASED!”

“heh.  thanks.  i was worried you’d be...ya know, unhappy.”

“WHY WOULD I BE UNHAPPY THAT YOU ARE GETTING TO KNOW A COOL PERSON BETTER?”

“dunno.  i guess that was pretty silly of me, huh.”

“INDEED.  WELL, PLEASE SAY HELLO TO FRISK FOR ME.”

Papyrus almost turned away...but hesitated when he saw Sans appear.  Sans didn’t _look_ happy.  He looked...confused?

“uh...why would i see frisk?”

“UM…”

“i canceled homework night with her, remember?”

Papyrus’s thoughts were racing.  He had the feeling that he was missing something very big.  Sans _was_ dating Frisk, right?  Nearly everyone knew it, as far as he knew.  Well, except Undyne and Alphys, who were great friends but...not the best at keeping secrets.  Still, Sans and Frisk were together all the time!  They did homework together, made science together, ate at Grillby’s together...watched the stars together.  Sans had walked Frisk home from school _at least_ twice every week for months!  They’d been inseparable at the last few stargazing parties!  So...why was he apparently going on a date with...someone else?

Maybe it was a friend date?  Or - and the thought made him feel a little sick - maybe Sans wasn’t really dating Frisk?

Papyrus breathed deeply.  He was the coolest brother ever!  He would work out this...odd situation...on his own time!  This was the time to support his (usually lazy) brother and his impending date!

“OH!  YES!  YOU ARE CORRECT!  YOU ARE NOT GOING ON A HOMEWORK DA- ON A HOMEWORK EVENT WITH FRISK!  HOW SILLY OF ME TO FORGET!”

“uh...paps?”

“SAY NO MORE, SANS!  I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, COOLEST OF BROTHERS, WISH YOU THE VERY BEST ON THIS DATE!  DO YOU NEED HELP PICKING OUT COOL DATE CLOTHING?”

Sans opened his mouth (to accept his brother’s help, Papyrus was sure) but was interrupted by a familiar chirp.  Frisk’s text alert.  Sans swiped the screen of his phone, glanced at the message...then stuck the phone back in his pocket.

“IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT?”

“...yeah?”

“IT IS JUST THAT YOU LOOK WORRIED.  YOU SHOULD NOT LOOK WORRIED BEFORE YOUR COOL DATE.  I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, DEMAND TO KNOW WHAT IS WRONG!”

“n-nothing’s wrong, paps.  i’m just runnin’ a little late.  see ya.”

“BUT DON’T YOU NEED…”

But Sans was gone.  Papyrus fumed for a moment about the fact that Sans had apparently left for his date in _his normal clothes_ , ratty hoodie and all, before returning to the greater concern at hand.

He retreated to his room and hit redial on his phone.  “LADY TORIEL!  I HAVE A PROBLEM!”

Oh, right.  The phone was still ringing.

“Papyrus?  Is everything alright, dear?”

“LADY TORIEL!  I HAVE A PROBLEM!”

“Oh, no!  Is it Sans?  Is he ill?”

“HE...HE SAID THAT HE HAD A DATE.”

He heard Lady Toriel gasp.  “I...I see.  Oh, no...no, Frisk, everything is fine.  Please, let me speak with Papyrus for a moment.  ...In private, please.  No, no, I think Sans is okay.  Please, I will tell you more after I speak to Papyrus.  Please…”

“LADY TORIEL, IS FRISK ALRIGHT?”

There was a pause.  “Ah...yes, she has merely retreated to her room to work on homework.  Please give me a moment to...there, I am in my own room.  Now, can you please explain what happened?”

Papyrus explained as best he could, making grand hand gestures that were lost on his audience due to his mode of communication.

“I...see.  You said that he was confused by the insinuation that he would be seeing Frisk?”

“YES.  IT WAS MOST ODD.”

“Hmm.  That is not what I expected at all.  Well, it appears that we have made a grave error.”

“WHAT?  I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, DO NOT MAKE ERRORS!  AND WHEN I DO, I MUST FIX THEM IMMEDIATELY!  ...WHAT WAS THE ERROR?”

“We...all of us assumed that Sans was dating Frisk.”

Papyrus furrowed his brow, his earlier worries resurfacing.  “...ISN’T HE?”

“It appears not.  Sans does not seem like the type of person to cheat in a relationship, does he?”

“MY BROTHER CHEATS AT MANY THINGS, INCLUDING TIME-SPACE SHENANIGANS, BUT I DO NOT THINK HE WOULD TREAT THE FEELINGS OF SOMEONE HE CARES ABOUT SO CASUALLY.”

“Indeed.  It seems that we have been mistaken in believing that he is dating Frisk, then.”

“...THEY...they are not dating?”

“I do not believe so.”

Papyrus had not felt so crushed since he was a babybones.  He had been so sure that Sans and Frisk were...and Sans had been so much more lively in recent months!  And Frisk was such a cool person!  It was, as Alphys would say if she was allowed to know secrets, The Perfect Ship!!

“Papyrus, are you alright?”

“...Yes, I think so.”

“Papyrus, please, tell me what’s wrong.  You’re using lowercase letters.  This isn’t like you.”

“Well, I...I MEAN, I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, SHALL OVERCOME MY FAILURES IN BROTHERHOOD AND SHALL BECOME A BETTER BROTHER FOR IT!  I SHALL NOT LET THIS ONE FAILURE OF OBSERVATION DESTROY MY DAY!”

“Papyrus, do you need to come over?”

“...Yes, please.”

“Can you drive, or shall I pick you up?”

Papyrus left a note on the kitchen counter and drove over.

Frisk was nowhere to be seen when he arrived.  King Asgore was out of town for some big meeting with other rulers.  The house was quiet.  Lady Toriel looked solemn, like she did when giving interviews on television.  It was a face that Papyrus knew hid a lot of pain and sadness.

“Frisk is still in her room,” Lady Toriel said.  “She doesn’t...I haven’t told her yet.  I’m not sure how to…”

“Tell me what?”

Papyrus looked up the stairs to see Frisk hanging off the banister in a cool but dangerous fashion.  She had a pencil stuck behind her ear, a smudge of something across her nose, and worry in her eyes.

“TELL YOU THAT...EVERYTHING IS FINE!  WE WERE SORRY TO WORRY YOU.  SANS IS JUST OUT...WITH A FRIEND.”

Frisk froze like she was preparing for a blue attack.  She looked afraid.  *Out...with a friend?*  She glanced away, rubbing one of her wrists.  She cleared her throat.  “O-oh.  You mean...on a date?”

“My child-”

“YES.”

“But…”  Frisk rubbed her wrist harder, scrunching up the sleeve of her sweater.  She didn’t say anything else.

“NEVER FEAR, THOUGH, FRISK!  I SHALL HELP YOU WITH YOUR HOMEWORK IN MY BROTHER’S STEAD.  THE HOMEWORK SHALL GIVE US NO TROUBLE AT ALL!  AFTER ALL, I AM VERY GREAT, AND YOU ARE ALMOST AS GREAT AS ME!”

Frisk nodded, and Papyrus decided not to comment on the tears she wiped away.  She ran up the stairs back to her room, closing the door with a little more force than necessary.

“That could have gone better, Papyrus.”  Lady Toriel sounded disapproving.

“NONSENSE!  HONESTY IS BEST.  I DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, BUT HIDING THE TRUTH WILL NOT HELP US FIGURE IT OUT.”

She sighed.  “Perhaps you are correct.  Well, I shall prepare a homework snack for the both of you.  I was not planning to make much because...because we were not expecting anyone else over, but since you are here…”

She retreated to the kitchen in the middle of her sentence, which seemed odd to Papyrus.  It was something some people seemed to do when they didn’t want to talk, but Lady Toriel was usually _very_ good at talking.  He shrugged and decided to help Frisk with her homework instead.

It was more challenging than Papyrus expected.  The math wasn’t too bad; Sans had taught Papyrus almost everything he knew about it, and the problems were really just number puzzles.  Some of them were solved in a way Papyrus was not familiar with, but the best puzzles had more than one path to the solution.

English...was another matter.  Papyrus didn’t know anything about the book Frisk was supposed to be writing her analysis report on, so he was relegated to looking up reviews for it on the internet and reading Frisk the funny parts.  It probably didn’t help - the humans reviewing the book didn’t give many details about character development or plot progress or any of the other things Frisk was supposed to put in her report - but it did make Frisk laugh.

That made Papyrus’s chest feel warm.  He and Frisk were _definitely_ besties, no matter what Undyne said.  He had known Frisk _way longer_ , and they had even gone on a date!  It had turned into a friend-date, because they didn’t feel that way about each other, but…

He turned back to Frisk, who was looking over her book with tired eyes.  She... _had_ felt that way about Sans, though, he was sure of it.  He’d been so happy: his favorite human, after so long, had finally found someone _almost_ as great as Papyrus to go on dates with!  Better yet, with Frisk as Sans’s girlfriend, they were kind-of-almost family!  She had been his...sisterfriend?  Girlsister?  He wasn’t sure what humans called their brothers’ girlfriends, but she had been _that_ , and it had been _good_ for everyone.

Now...now Sans was out dating _someone else_ , someone who _hadn’t_ broken down the barrier and saved the Underground, and...Papyrus didn’t know what to think.

*Papyrus?  It’s okay, you know.*

He noticed Frisk looking at him when she began to sign.  He hadn’t realized he’d been staring (how embarrassing!) but he gave her a smile anyways.

*I...I guess it’s kinda weird, that I thought Sans and I were dating in the first place.  I...guess...I mean, I’m just a kid to him, right?  I shouldn’t have...gotten my hopes up.*  She managed to finish her statement with steady hands, but Papyrus could see her lip quivering.  Good thing Lady Toriel had trained him for this!

“THERE, THERE,” he said in his best Lady-Toriel-voice.  “IT WILL BE ALRIGHT.”  He scooted over next to her and gave her the greatest hug he could.

“Yeah,” Frisk whispered.  She was hiding her face in his scarf, but Papyrus thought he saw tears.  He did a little rocking motion, just like Lady Toriel had shown him.  “I-it’ll be alright.”

“I AM SURE THAT YOU WILL FIND SOMEONE EVEN BETTER FOR YOU THAN MY LAZY BROTHER.”

“Yeah.”

“AND I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, SHALL HELP YOU!  I KNOW LOTS OF COOL PEOPLE!”

She sat back a little and signed, *Maybe in a little bit.  I’m not feeling up to dating right now.*

“OH.  Oh, well...THEN I SHALL HELP YOU WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BETTER!  OR PERHAPS I COULD TAKE YOU OUT ON A FRIEND-DATE!  WOULD THAT HELP?”

*Maybe.*  Frisk was giggling; Papyrus could feel it!  Progress!  *We could make spaghetti.*

“OF COURSE!  WITH THE SPECIAL MEATBALLS YOU LIKE SO MUCH?”

*Yeah.*

“MAYBE WE CAN MAKE IT A SLEEPOVER, AND WE CAN DO OUR HAIR AND OUR NAILS AND TELL EACH OTHER SCARY STORIES!”

*But...you don’t have hair or nails.*

“NONSENSE!  UNDYNE GIFTED ME A FANTASTIC WIG FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE WHEN SHE LAST HAD A SLEEPOVER WITH US!  SHE ALSO INTRODUCED ME TO STICK-ON NAILS!  THEY ARE VERY COOL!”

*It sounds amazing.*

After several minutes of comfortable silence, Frisk started to feel heavy.  Papyrus debated between waking her back up to finish her report or letting her sleep.  Her report looked almost done (though, admittedly, he had no clue what a completed report looked like) and she really should finish it.  On the other hand, she was sad.  Papyrus had very little experience dealing with a sad Frisk, but he had a _lot_ of experience dealing with a sad Sans; and a sad Sans was always a sleepy Sans.

He decided to let her sleep.

He tiptoed down the stairs shortly after, laden down with Frisk’s books and her school bag.  Lady Toriel was at the table, one paw wrapped around a mug of tea and the other tapping on the table.  She wasn’t staring at anything that he could see, but she was staring at it very intensely.

“Oh-Papyrus!  Are you finished already?  I didn’t bring you up anything to eat; I apologize.”

It took effort for Papyrus to remember to keep his voice down, but he managed.  “No apologies necessary!  We had an excellent time doing homework, and I believe Frisk is nearly finished with her assignments!”

“Oh - she isn’t done?”

“We had a small chat and she cried for a bit.  I used your mom-lessons!  They comforted her...maybe a bit too much.  She fell asleep.”

“I see.  Well, it is probably for the best.  How much did she complete?”

He fumbled for Frisk’s planner and rattled off which assignments they had finished.  Toriel studiously marked them off with little checkmarks in green ink.

“I believe everything due tomorrow is complete, at least.  She will have some extra work tomorrow evening, but I am glad she made as much progress as she did.  Thank you for helping her, and for cheering her up.”

“IT WAS NO TROUBLE FOR THE GREAT PAPYRUS!”

“Shhh!”

“I apologize!”

“It is no problem.  Will you have a mug of tea with me, or head back home?”

“I...should probably leave.  I do not wish to worry Sans.  I do not know when he is expected...back, but he will not be able to sleep until he reads me my bedtime story.”

“Of course.  I wouldn’t wish to keep you.  Are you feeling better?”

Papyrus was surprised to find that he did, indeed, feel okay.  Lady Toriel smiled when he told her, and she wished him a good night and a safe drive home.

Sans was not home yet when he arrived back at his house.  The note on the kitchen counter remained untouched, so Papyrus threw it away.

He...didn’t feel so okay, anymore.

* * *

 

Frisk wanted to stay home sick from school but she knew it wouldn’t be allowed.  That was the one downside of having a teacher for a mom: education was taken very, very seriously in her house.  If she wasn’t in danger of infecting other students, wasn’t scheduled for a world-changing meeting, and was physically capable of walking, she knew she would be in class.

She considered asking her mom to drive her home, though.  She hoped Sans wouldn’t show up.  She couldn’t think of a reason why he _would_ , now that he was dating someone else, but it had been made very apparent to Frisk that she didn’t know as much about monster dating as she thought she did, despite her best efforts to educate herself.  It would be very awkward-

Sans was waiting for her after school.  Naturally.

Frisk tried to act normal - she really did - but he was annoyingly perceptive.  He asked her _twice_ on the walk home what was up, with a look in his eye that meant a BAD TIME for someone.  She really hoped he didn’t find out about the boy who had knocked her over in the hallway after lunch; it hadn’t been _his_ fault that she was on edge all day, and he’d apologized and collected her books for her and found her a tissue for her tears and runny nose.

Sans offered to stay and help her with homework, even though it was a Wednesday and he usually partook in Stand-Up Night at Grillby’s on Wednesday.  Frisk wasn’t sure how to say no, so she nodded.  It probably would’ve looked weird for her to refuse, right?.  She had to act natural!  What if he found out she thought they’d been dating?!  She felt her face redden with mortification, then redden a little more when she caught his worried look.

Thankfully, the evening went well.  He teased her about her leftover homework from the night before but made no mention of how his own evening had gone.  He made more puns than normal - an incredible feat - and despite everything, Frisk found herself laughing.  Toriel was laughing as well, thankfully.  Frisk had been worried that her mom would treat Sans differently.

After he left, though, she just felt...drained.

*Mom?*

“Yes, my child?”

*My homework’s done.  May I go to bed?*

“Are you feeling alright?”

She gave a thumbs-up.  *Yeah.  Just tired.*

“I see.  I was making a pie; are you sure you do not wish to have a slice?”

*Tomorrow?  Maybe for breakfast?*

That got a smile out of Toriel, even though she shook her head.  Frisk smiled as well; if she got a pie breakfast out of this whole mess, it would at least cheer her up a bit.

“We shall see.  Well, good night, my child.”

*Good night, Mom.*

Toriel smiled that small, almost painfully happy smile reserved for special moments, and gave Frisk a tender nose-nuzzle.

“I hope you feel better in the morning.”

Frisk didn’t feel better in the morning, despite the pie she was indeed allowed to eat for breakfast, but that wasn’t anyone’s fault but her own.  Someone on Undernet had posted a picture of Sans on his date, and it had found its way onto her feed.  She couldn’t make out his date’s face - whoever took the picture was facing Sans - but she was wearing a pair of worn jeans and a sports hoodie.  Her black hair was tied back in a careless ponytail with a bright orange scrunchie.  She was gesturing across the table at Sans, one hand splayed outwards in a motion that emphasized a delicate wrist and long artist’s fingers, and Frisk could see the curve of a smile along one cheek.

Sans, though...Sans looked _happy_ .  She didn’t realize how unhappy he normally seemed until she saw that picture.  His smile looked _real_ there, sitting with the strange woman Frisk didn’t know.

She couldn’t find it in her heart to be mad at the woman, not if she could make Sans smile like _that._

It was a trend that continued over the next several weeks.  Sans gradually seemed happier.  He did miss more and more homework nights, apparently spending time with his new girlfriend, but Frisk didn’t take it personally.  He even missed a few stargazing parties.  Frisk didn’t mind as much as she thought she would.  It was hard to face him now, though she’d gotten better, and he always seemed so much more _alive_ after his dates.  Based on the intel she gathered from Alphys (who was stalking the pair on a disturbingly regular basis and clearly needed to start a new anime series or something), they didn’t do much.  They alternated between eating at Grillby’s and exploring random human restaurants.  They rarely went out during the day, since they both worked, but occasionally took walks in the park on weekends.

On their three-month anniversary, Sans bought her flowers: a neat bouquet of white and pink azaleas.  Alphys’s elation could hardly be contained by her excessive emoticons.

Frisk didn’t know Sans’s girlfriend’s name.  She...tried not to know.

But...she made Sans happy in ways Frisk, apparently, could not.  It was a depressing thought, but one that filled Frisk with DETERMINATION.  She liked Sans - she really, _really_ liked Sans - and no matter what else, she was his friend.  She was _glad_ that he was happy.  And if he couldn’t be happy with her…

...she’d let him be happy with someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for stopping by. Please take some absorbent material to dry your face on your way out.
> 
> Fun fact of the chapter: azaleas have a [very interesting meaning.](http://flowerinfo.org/Azalea-Flowers) They're also kinda pretty.
> 
> Toriel just moms everyone, doesn't she? She's good at it, at least. On a related note, Papyrus's comments related to "Mom Lessons" are a reference to Undertale's neutral ending where the skelebros go to live with Toriel in the Ruins, and Toriel starts teaching Papyrus how to be "the best mom" for prospective humans who may fall into the Underground.
> 
> Please remember to hug the Frisks in your life. This is going to get a bit worse before it gets better, so hang in there! Thank you to everyone who's been reading, and especially to those who have left kudos and comments! See you all Saturday!


	5. The Wheel Turns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night is darkest right before dawn.
> 
> Something awful happens, and Frisk must deal with the consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is your reminder to read the tags. I'd be happy to summarize the chapter for anyone who needs it upon request.

Almost four months to the day since Sans cancelled that first homework evening, he all but disappeared.  Papyrus reported hearing him bumping about in his room from time to time, but he wouldn’t respond to knocks.  A quick investigation by his friends revealed that he’d called in sick from all his jobs (or all the ones they knew about, at least; he had a surprising number of them) and that even Grillby hadn’t seen him.

He didn’t call or text Toriel or Frisk to explain his absence, as he usually did; he just...stopped showing up.  Papyrus was forced to cancel that month’s stargazing party, unsure of what else to do.  Frisk was worried at first that Sans had found out about her embarrassing crush, but he wasn’t just ignoring  _ her. _  Alphys’s posts on the Undernet were growing frantic; he hadn’t been seen with his girlfriend in almost two weeks.  Frisk tried to remain calm.  He didn’t owe her anything, after all, and though she missed him she trusted him to come back when he was ready.

The thought filled her with DETERMINATION.

Then…

Then Papyrus called.

He was panicking.  Frisk and Toriel both jumped into their minivan without a second thought; Asgore was out of town at a conference; weather concerns were forcing him to return early, so Toriel had the minivan fueled and ready to go.  She navigated the icy roads with the ease of practice while Frisk tried to calm Papyrus down.  It took the entire ride over to get a semi-coherent story out of him.

He’d opened Sans’s door, hoping to nag his brother into eating.  Sans, to his surprise, had actually been there...in a way.  He didn’t specify what “in a way” meant.  Frisk felt dread growing in her stomach.

The front door to the skeleton brothers’ home was propped open; never a good sign.  She ran straight up to Sans’s room, following the sound of Papyrus’s sobs.

He was holding Sans’s jacket.  Spread across his knees, across the bedspread, was…

...dust.

Frisk stared.  She heard her mother coming up the stairs, felt her mother move her out of the way to see into the room, but she didn’t...didn’t register it.

What had happened?

_ Why? _

She slid down the wall, tuning out the sounds of Toriel trying to pry Sans’s jacket away from Papyrus.  Something about gathering dust.

Sans...was Sans really  _ gone? _

She stared at pink house slippers, lightly sprinkled with gray where they had fallen on the ground next to the bed.  Next to them, half-shoved under the bed, was something long and metallic.  Sharp…?

Papyrus described, through his sobs, how he’d thought he heard something the night before.  He hadn’t known what it was, just that it was coming from Sans’s room.  He’d knocked on the door and offered a meal and a hug and general brothering, but had gotten no response.  That wasn’t unusual, at least for the past couple of weeks.  He’d left Sans for a full day - something he was regretting deeply - and had finally broken into his brother’s room just in time to hold him one last, brief time.

**No.**

Frisk wasn’t going to  _ let _ this ending stand.  Not after everything.  A tiny voice in her head said that  _ you deserve to RESET, you deserve a better ending, _ but she ignored it.  This wasn’t about her.  She reached out for her last SAVE…

...and found herself back in her room, the evening before.

She was grateful that she’d SAVEd  _ after _ finishing her homework, because ain’t nobody got time for  _ that. _

She nearly tripped on her way down the stairs, scaring her mother.  She could read the slight deja-vu in Toriel’s eyes; she felt a little guilty for the LOAD, but it was for a good cause.  It was worth it.  It  _ had _ to be worth it.

*Mom?  I have a bad feeling.*

“I...I do as well, my child. I can’t tell why, but…”

*We need to check on Sans.*

“Yes.”

He didn’t pick up his phone, which Frisk expected.  Papyrus didn’t pick up his phone either, which she had  _ not _ expected.

*I think we need to go over.*

“Very well.  I hope that they are simply busy with something, but with Sans acting the way he has been lately...I fear something is terribly wrong.”

They were both quiet on the drive over, but Frisk’s mind was racing.  It was nearly 24 hours before...well,  _ before, _ so Sans should be fine.  Papyrus had  _ seen _ Sans in the process of dusting (her mind stuttered in horror at the thought), so at the moment  _ he should be fine. _

Right?

But...Papyrus said he’d heard something the evening before, which meant the current evening.  What if they were too late?

What if they were too  _ early, _ and Sans got suspicious?  What if they pushed him into doing whatever it was he’d done?

The walk up to the brothers’ front door had never seemed longer.  Frisk tried to walk right in, the memory of a half-open door still fresh in her mind, but it was locked.

She retrieved the appropriate key from her phone’s key ring with shaking hands, trying very, very hard not to think of dust.  Toriel, thankfully, didn’t scold her for breaking into the brothers’ home instead of adhering to social norms and knocking.

Frisk ran straight up to Sans’s room, ignoring Papyrus’s shouts from the kitchen.  Her mother would take care of him.

Carefully - not wanting to disturb anyone before she had a chance to scout - Frisk turned the handle to Sans’s room, and to her surprise, it opened.  She hesitated.  He usually kept his bedroom door locked.  What if...what if…

He was there, lying on his side on the bed, facing away from the door.  She thought at first that he hadn’t heard her, and tried to think of something to say…

“hey, kiddo.”  His voice sounded hoarse.

“Hey.”  Frisk didn’t sound much better, but she was used to that.

“so, what’s…”

She ran across the room and tackled him in a hug, winding her arms around his ribcage from behind.  Belatedly, she remembered to be careful.

“h-hey, buddy, what’s…”

“Don’t go,” Frisk whispered.  The love in her heart - friend-love, crush-love, and everything in between - bubbled over into tears.  “Please, please,  _ please _ don’t go…”

“not planning on going anywhere.”

She could  _ hear _ the lie in his voice.

“...why don’t you go back downstairs, talk to paps for a bit?”

“No.”

“kid, i-”

“No.”

“G o   d o w n s t a i r s ,   F r i s k.”

She shuddered under the weight of his words.  Her throat closed; she couldn’t force the words out.  Instead, she signed against his ribs, hoping he would understand.  *No no no.*

Then...she was across the room, her back aching from its impact with the closet door.  Sans - now facing her - sat up slowly, his left eye flickering blue and yellow.  One bare hand was stretched towards her, fingers bent in a grotesque claw.  It was a scene from her very worst nightmares, the ones where she RESET the world again and again until she choked on time and dust.

She tried to focus on Sans, tried to regulate her breathing and clear her head.  There were light smudges on his jacket, she realized.  Some...grey powder.  Her fingers trembled as she tried to lift them, but they wouldn’t cooperate.  “Sans…”

He didn’t respond.

Frisk tried to stand up, but...she couldn’t.  The blue magic that held her body to the ground was far too strong, so she settled back down.  Even though she’d never experienced it for herself, her night terrors seemed to indicate that Sans was a formidable foe once he mustered up the effort to try.  She had no doubt that he had the power to hold her down against her will and didn’t want to strain his magic by struggling.

Instead, she continued her analysis of the skeleton half-kneeling on the bed instead.  It took her a moment to realize it, but he wasn’t wearing a shirt under his jacket.  His ribs were exposed where it fell open and she could see the the center of his collarbone and the first several sets of ribs.

There was a neat gash running vertically down one side of his ribcage, just beside his sternum, and something red and viscous was seeping through.  Four of the ribs that formed his upper chest were halfway sawed through, like someone was in the process of carving his chest open.  It was a thought that shook Frisk even more than Sans’s sudden inclination to violence.

She could see, just behind the slash, the glow of his incredibly delicate, infinitely precious soul beating in time with his sharp breathing.

Sans followed her gaze to his own chest.  He looked a little bewildered for a moment, as if he had forgotten about his injury, then  _ snarled _ and closed his jacket.  The movement took both hands and Frisk revelled in the lightened load on her body.

*Sans, are you okay?* She signed.  He wasn’t looking at her, so she repeated the question aloud.

He still wasn’t responding.  Frisk wracked her brain for something,  _ anything _ that she could say to make this better...and failed.  She wasn’t any more than a casual friend, after all.  What could she possibly say - possibly  _ do _ \- to make this better?

Slowly, keeping her hands in full view and giving him plenty of time to escape, she shuffled back over to him on her knees.  The trip across Sans’s bedroom floor seemed to take an eternity, especially when Sans was apparently offline.  She slid detritus out of the way - abandoned socks, chip bags, and his favorite mug - and knelt by the bed.  She was close enough to touch his knee, but she didn’t think he’d welcome the contact.

“Sans, are you  _ okay?" _  Her voice cracked from stress, but she didn’t dare clear her throat.

This time, he looked over at her.  He didn’t move his bones, but that one flashing eye (yellow-blue-yellow-blue) met hers.  She tried to focus on both his sockets, but with his left eye socket dark and his right impersonating a strobe light it was...difficult.

Finally - finally! - he seemed to come to his senses.  He glanced to the side and closed his eye sockets.  “...no,” he said, so softly Frisk nearly missed it.

She took that as her cue to initiate comfort.  She hoisted herself up onto the bed next to him (still moving a little gingerly) and wrapped both arms loosely around him.  Very, very slowly, he started leaning into her.  He didn’t hug her back, but he...accepted the hug.

Tears escaped Frisk’s eyes when she shifted a hip and felt the bone saw on the bed next to her.  She wanted to yell, to scream, to ask  _ why would you ever _ and  _ what made you do it _ and maybe even  _ what were you trying to accomplish, _ but she knew from experience that it wouldn’t help.  Instead, she held him - careful of his ribs - and tried to push every bit of love and affection she had into her hug.  It wasn’t enough to make him happy, she understood that now, and if he knew the truth of her  _ stupid _ feelings he’d probably reject her outright.

Still, she hoped it was enough for  _ this. _

Toriel and Papyrus found them like that, Frisk giving Sans a full-body hug and Sans limp in her grasp.  It surprised her to realize that it had barely been a few minutes since her mad dash into the brothers’ home; it felt like so much longer.

Sans tried to pull away, and Frisk almost let him, but she could feel his magic gathering in preparation to teleport.  She wasn’t going to let him go  _ anywhere _ without her, not until she was convinced he was in a safe frame of mind.  Besides, he was shaking again, which probably meant he was too distraught or too low on magic to land safely.

“Sans?”  Toriel asked.  Her tone was the one she used when one of her students got angry: kind, but firm as the mountain.  “I do not understand what happened, but are you alright now?”

He was quiet, which was all the confirmation anyone really needed.  Out of the corner of her eye, Frisk could see her mother moving further into the room, trying to get a better look at the both of them.  There was a very obvious flinch as the damaged ribs came into view, and she hoped Sans didn’t notice.

If she’d been asked to guess Sans’s reaction to being found in an apparent suicide attempt (or a self-injury attempt that had the same result), Frisk would have said that he would be angry, defensive, and generally ornery.  She would’ve anticipated jokes and deflection.  She would’ve expected him to try to justify his actions.

He did none of that.  He merely sat in her arms, propped up against her and ignoring all proceedings as Toriel maneuvered around them and healed the injuries she found.  There were other injuries beside the obvious one, as it turned out.  There was some half-healed bruising around one of his wrists, a few chips along the delicate bones of his hands, and a worrying crack along the back of his head.

No one could get out of him where they’d come from, or if it had anything to do with his recent disappearance.

“Papyrus, why don’t you pack bags for yourself and your brother and come over to our house for a few days?”  Toriel asked, frowning.

Papyrus looked unusually subdued.  “You and King Asgore won’t mind?”

“Asgore is returning early from his meeting, so I am in charge of who stays with us right now.  I would appreciate the company, and - forgive me, Sans - I do not think either of you should be alone right now.”

“BUT I-”

“Papyrus, I know that there is nothing you would not do for your brother, but you do not need to help him through this alone.  Believe me when I say that caring for a sick family member wears you down very quickly.  Please, let us help you.”

Frisk didn’t hear the remainder of the conversation.  Sans had started to shift in her arms, hissing when the movement pulled at his healing injuries.  “Shh,” she said.  Her throat hurt like she’d been screaming, which made no sense.  “Shhh.”

“ugh...kid?  frisk?”

“Yeah.  Are you back with us?”

“you okay?  you sound awful.”

“Yeah, well, you gave us a pretty big scare.”  Would he remember how he’d crumbled to dust?  She hoped not.  The memory of one’s own death was a trauma she wouldn’t wish on anyone.

“why...didn’t you l-leave?”

“You’re my friend, Sans.  What kind of friend would I be if I let you hurt yourself?”

He didn’t respond to that.

Toriel turned back towards them.  “Sans?”

“yeah?”

“Do you need to let Terry know where you are?”

“i...no.  she...uh, we broke up about a month back.”

“O-oh!  I apologize; I’ve seen so many pictures…”

“yeah, well, we’re still  _ friends. _  just decided it was better that way.”

There was a look on Toriel’s face that Frisk was glad the skeleton in her arms didn’t see.  Heck, she was glad he couldn’t see her own face, for that matter.  Better off??  On the one hand, Sans was now a free agent and that made her little heart skip a beat.  On the other, the very idea that someone had rejected Sans - had been offered a partnership with him and decided ‘hey, no, I’ll look somewhere else’ - made her  _ burn _ with anger.

And if Sans wasn’t distraught over a break-up...why had he hurt himself so much?

“Well.  Regardless, we will be taking you home with us.  Any objections?”

The Mom Voice was in full effect.  Frisk shuddered.

“...no?”

“Excellent!”  She turned and walked out of the room, following the sounds of a very loud skeleton’s debate on how many pots and pans he should bring with him.

Sans shifted and looked up.  Faint tracks of...something led down his face from his eye sockets.  “you sure you’re okay, buddy?”

“I should be asking you that.”

“you really do sound bad.  and, uh, i’m 95% sure i just threw you into a wall there.  unless i didn’t, which would make this reeeeaaally awkward.  so...if anyone needs healing, i’d say it’s you.”

“I’m fine; I know you didn’t mean it.  And my throat hurts for some reason.”

“oh.  you can, uh.  sign.  if it’s easier for ya.”

“Thanks, but you’ve got my hands.”

“o-oh, right.”

Frisk wished she hadn’t said anything, since - predictably - Sans pulled away from her after that.  He was rubbing his eye sockets with his sleeves, removing all traces of what she could only guess were tears.

*Sorry,* she signed once he’d composed himself a little.

“what?  why are you sorry?”

Because she’d LOADed when she’d made a promise to herself to  _ never _ be like the Frisks in her nightmares, abusing their powers over time.  Because, despite her intentions, she hadn’t followed his wishes.  *Because I don’t think I’ve been a very good friend to you.*

“what?  aww, don’t tell me you’re taking undyne’s nonsense seriously!  you’re a great-”

*You were hurting, and I didn’t see it.  I should’ve seen it.  I’m so, so sorry.*

“psh.  it’s not your fault, pal.  it’s not your job to keep me happy.”

*Then what are friends for?*

“it’s...look, it was stupid to think i could handle it alone.  i didn’t mean to worry you.  but...i guess you know all about that, huh.”

*All about...what?*

He stared at her.

*Sans?  What do I know about*

“uh...the medical files?  dr. g’s stuff?”

*I’m not sure what you’re talking about.*

“then...how did you know what i was doing?  how did you know i was in trouble?”

*I just...knew.*  A lame excuse, but she wasn’t sure how to express the intricacies of time/space in sign language.

Sans was eyeing her with mild suspicion.  That was okay; she didn’t exactly believe him, either.  Besides, he could probably figure things out pretty easily once he was thinking clearly.

*So.  Wanna pick out your own clothes, or should Mom and I do it for you?*

That got him moving, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone, take a deep breath. We're all okay.
> 
> Fun fact of the chapter: Sans's injury crossed the second through fifth true ribs on his right side, close to his sternum. On a human, that portion of the ribcage isn't actually bone: it's cartilage, allowing the ribcage to expand and contract with each breath. Sans, being a magical skeleton monster, is built a little differently. Still hurts, I'd imagine. (Also, I spent a weird amount of time studying nekkid skeletons trying to make sure I got this right.)
> 
> This is about the darkest this story will go. We've made it through so much, and the story is more than halfway done. Thank you for sticking with me! All the support is overwhelming, and words can't do justice to the gratitude I feel for all of you. Thank you.
> 
> Also: **[If you or anyone you love has suicidal desires or feelings, please talk to someone you trust, seek professional help, and/or call a suicide hotline.](http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html) The site [suicide.org](http://www.suicide.org) maintains a list of international hotlines and other resources for your use.**


	6. A Heart of Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sans is still having a bad day, but it's better than it was the first time around. We also get some answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our story thus far:
> 
> Frisk is an ordinary high school senior with a part-time job as the ambassador for monsters. During a friendly gathering with said monsters, she makes a comment that attracts the attention of one Sans the skeleton, who - for reasons unknown - starts seeking her out afterwards. They grow close, and Frisk slowly comes to the realization that they are (gasp!!) dating.
> 
> Except...they aren't. Some months later, Sans strikes up a relationship with another woman unknown to his family and friends. Alphys and Undyne (who can't keep a secret, and thus were not told that this is supposed to be a Frans story) Ship It Hard. Papyrus, on the other hand, is very unhappy that _his_ ship doesn't appear to be canon.
> 
> He has bigger things to worry about, though. Sans has apparently decided to live the life of a hermit, which is problematic when family and friends and work are depending on him. This culminates in Sans's dusty old room getting a bit more dusty, prompting Frisk to NOPE back in time a day to save his boney butt.
> 
> Long story short: everyone is confused and sad, and Sans owes us all some explanations.

Sans wound up not being allowed to pack much.  Frisk did her best to intervene on his behalf, but aside from making sure he had his favorite slippers and comfy pyjamas (the dark blue ones with the cartoon stars), the situation was out of her hands.  Literally.  Papyrus was a tall guy.

She herself had been assigned to Sans-watching duty, both by default (Toriel and Papyrus had the packing thing handled) and because Sans had a crushing hold on her hand.  She didn’t dare try to dislodge him.  He seemed to be wavering strangely in and out of reality.  One moment he’d be talking normally, but as soon as he lost focus he just...mentally checked out.  He’d eventually return, but he claimed to have no memory of the time he was ‘away.’

He wouldn’t take initiative on anything, but seemed content to follow her around.  She carefully led him over to the couch and sat beside him while her mother tried to convince his brother not to pack the entire contents of his house into the van.  Papyrus appeared to be limiting the number of pots and pans he was packing, so that was progress.

“you don’t need to sit with me,” Sans said during one of his lucid moments.  “i won’t go anywhere.”

And yes, the feeling of gathering magic - like static on the edge of a thunderstorm - had dissipated, but that wasn’t the point.  Frisk told him so, trying to loosen his grip so he didn’t aggravate the injuries on his wrist bones.  The sound he made was like a cross between a chuckle and a choke, and sounded very unpleasant.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.

He shook his head, silent.

Eventually, Papyrus disentangled his brother and lifted him into the van, worry etched onto his skull.  Frisk decided to sit in the front seat to give the brothers some space.  She was used to a crowded van, but Papyrus had packed a worrying number of boxes and bags into the back.  She hadn’t known the brothers even owned so many boxes.

The ride home seemed to take a small eternity.  Sans glanced up to the front seat from time to time, as if making sure Frisk was still there, but spent most of his time glancing down at his hands.  None of Papyrus’s stories or jokes seemed to have any effect.  Sans winced every time the car went over a big bump or slid on the still-icy roads, but other than that he didn’t react at all.

It was unnerving.

Finally, _finally_ they pulled up outside the Dreemurr home.  The lights were still on, and Toriel was fretting about that, but it made Frisk feel warm just looking at it.  She always hated coming home to a dark, empty house.

Being a big believer in hospitality, Toriel settled both brothers into the guest bedroom and refused to let them help carry anything in.  Which, really, was all fine and good for her; _she_ could easily lift a few hundred pounds.  Frisk, on the other hand, was a scrawny little high schooler with no weightlifting experience aside from the few times she hadn’t been fast enough to escape Undyne’s Training from Hell(tm).

She felt like a limp noodle by the time she carried the last rattling box (action figures, maybe?) into the guest room.  She set it down as gently as she could and glanced over at the beds.  There were two, but both brothers had curled up together on one in a mess of bones and blankets.  They’d been quiet throughout the moving process, but what Frisk could see of Sans’s face looked much better than it had before.  More peaceful, at least.  It looked like being near his brother was doing him some good.

She backed out of the room, ready to let both of them rest.

“hey, frisk?”

Her heart skipped a little beat, but she ignored it.  She tiptoed over to Sans’s side of the bed, careful not to disturb the other skeleton.

“here.”  There was the tell-tale sound of an inventory being opened, then a three-ring binder dropped into Sans’s hand.  It was messy, covered in splotches and stains with loose pages sticking out every which way, but given that it had been in Sans’s possession that was pretty much expected.  “this might...explain some things.”  He glanced away, looking either embarrassed or afraid or both.

“Okay.  Thanks.”  She tiptoed back out of the room and closed the door before curiosity overtook her.

The binder she held was unlabeled.  The first few pages were printouts of random puns, which were enlightening but - she suspected - not quite what Sans was trying to convey by giving this to her.

Toriel was waiting for her in the kitchen.  “My child?  How are the boys?  And what is that?”

“Sans and Papyrus are asleep, or nearly there.  I think.  Sans gave me this; he said it would ‘explain some things.’”

“Hmm.  Well, that young man does have a lot of explaining to do.  May I…?”

“Oh!  Sure.”  She set the binder on the table between her and her mother.  Toriel, predictably, nearly lost her composure over the puns, but managed to contain herself.

A few pages in, the topic changed abruptly to what looked like some kind of report.  It was printed on the thicker recycled paper the Underground had used, heavy and textured under Frisk’s fingers.  “Notes on Experiment 42397B,” she read.  “Attempt to increase HP values in monsters.”

The wording was a little archaic, and a bit more sciencey than she and her mother were really familiar with, but they thought they got the gist of it.  The report detailed an experiment on five separate monsters with low HP.  The volunteers were not referenced by name, but one was a skeleton with extremely low stats and a penchant for disrupting proceedings with general tomfoolery.  Given the evidence Frisk assumed that was Sans.

Treatments for HP during the experiment ranged from the logical (like increasing certain elements of each monster’s diet) to the creative (like specialized workout routines tailored to the monsters’ body types) to the absurd (like taping magnets to the volunteers’ souls and delivering a low-level electrical pulse).  There was some success, but either it was temporary or minimal.  Worse, each monster seemed to react to something different, much to the frustration of the report’s author.

The experiment was terminated as inconclusive: there was no treatment that guaranteed an increase in HP across all monsters.  Which was unfortunate, sure, but not quite the bombshell revelation Frisk thought it was heading towards.  What did an unsuccessful experiment have to do with Sans’s condition?  Was there some kind of long-term side effect he was dealing with?

“My child?  What is that under your hand?”

Frisk moved her hand.  There, at the bottom of the last page of the report, was some kind of handwritten code.  It looked like a collection of symbols - snowflakes, smiley faces, and hands - but it was nonsense to her.

Toriel examined it with tense eyes.  “I...it is strange, but I have a feeling I have seen this somewhere before.  I cannot recall where.  Perhaps...someone I once knew used such a code?  But it appears to be so whimsical and arbitrary.  Childish, almost.”

Childish was a good word for it.  In fact, Frisk felt like she might have seen it somewhere as well.  But where…?  “Do you think it could be a human code?”

“Hmm...perhaps.  But...why would humans write in such a manner?  It looks inefficient.  And how would human writing get onto a report from the Underground?”

Good point.  All the same, she brought her phone’s web browser and tapped the search bar.

‘Snowflake smiley face code’ returned something about computer codes, emojis, and ASCII symbols, whatever that meant.  ‘Snowflake smiley face hands code’ was pretty much the same.  What was she missing?

Wait.

Sans.  Papyrus.  Computer fonts.  It was a long shot, but maybe…?

‘Smiley face hand snowflake font’ brought up...well, at first she thought it was a mistake.  What on earth was ‘Wingdings?’  Shrugging, she tapped on one of the search results, which brought up a chart for a strange-looking computer font that looked familiar.

Sure enough, upon closer examination the symbols matched.  Well.   _That_ helped things out considerably.

Something nudged her hand, bringing her attention away from her phone screen.  Her mother was offering a pad of paper and a pencil.  *Thanks,* she signed, and got to work.

It was slow going, but she managed to translate each symbol into a letter.  To her surprise, the message was actually intelligible:

_SANS HAS BEEN WARNED TO WATCH HIS HEALTH.  LONG-TERM EFFECTS UNCERTAIN.  ADDITIONAL RESEARCH NEEDED.  -G_

Well.  That was...something.

“Who is ‘G’?”  Toriel wondered aloud.

“No idea.  Sans said something about a ‘Doctor G;’ maybe it’s the same person.”

“Hmm.  I cannot recall a particular ‘Doctor G’ from my time in the Underground, but perhaps he studied after I retreated to the Ruins?  We shall have to ask Asgore when he returns tomorrow evening.  I hardly know the minutiae of every scientific endeavor from the Underground, but I do not think that something this potentially important would have gone unnoticed.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

There were more pages, but they were mostly blank.  Frisk flipped through them quickly.

“Wait!  Turn back a little.”

She did so.  Sure enough, there was a set of those same strange symbols printed on the page.  What was odd was their placement: about halfway down the page, starting in the middle of what should have been a line of text and wrapping around to the next.  It looked like someone had taken a single sentence out of the middle of a page of typing.

The loose pages were becoming a hassle, so Frisk collected them and set them on the table carefully.  As she did so, she noticed writing.   _Sans’s_ handwriting.  It was messy, as his notes usually were, with sloppy letters and crossed-out sentences.  What was odd was the sheer amount of scribblings.  Had he been working on something?

“Oh,” Toriel said, flipping through the pages.  “He...Sans was trying to translate the notes.  Look, here.  He has notes on letter frequency and possible combinations, based on...what looks like some sample of text in an ancient runic alphabet.  I didn’t know he could read that; it hasn’t been used since I was young.”

“Oh.  Wow.  It’s like the Rosetta Stone.”

“What?”

“It’s...there’s this big stone that someone found with writing on it.  Someone a long time ago wrote the same thing - an announcement of some kind - on this stone tablet in different languages.  By the time the tablet was found, no one knew how to read most of those languages anymore.  A bunch of researchers studied the tablet for a long time, and they managed to translate one of the messages entirely.  That meant that they had a full message in a few of different languages.  Since they knew what those words and letters meant, they were able to compare that sample of writing to other things they’d found and basically re-create some of these old languages.”

“Fascinating!  And you think Sans was trying to do something similar?”

“Yeah.  See, here?  It looks like he had a pretty good idea of what some letters were, based on his sample.  He’s missing some letters - and most of the punctuation, if I’m right - but he’s got a pretty good start.”

It was shocking to remember just how smart Sans was.  Still…

“Oh.  Oh.  My child...here.”

There was a note, looking more like a letter than a translation.  It was cleaner than most of his other writing, surprisingly enough, but his letters were wobbly like his hand had been shaking when he wrote.

_this is it.  i’m giving up.  there’s no way for me to tell what dr. g was trying to do without more samples of his writing.  after the                                                            nothing’s been the same.  heh.  can’t even write about it, i guess._

_there was_ _something_ _that happened.  afterwards, people forgot dr. g and most of what he did.  can’t talk about him without giving folks headaches.  can’t write his full name down.  why do i remember when other people can’t?  can i even trust my own memories?_

_one of the things dr. g was working on was hp increases.  i was one of his test subjects.  volunteers, he calls us in his report.  why did i volunteer?  why can’t i remember that part?_

_anyways, something’s been off with me ever since.  i think the report i have is missing some pieces.  i remember some things that aren’t in there.  can’t tell if they were left out of the official record, or if they happened after the fact.  everything’s fuzzy.  maybe i’m just making it all up.  but...something’s still wrong with me._

_that’s why i’m writing this down.  if something else happens, if i forget even more than i already have, maybe this will help me remember.  or maybe it will be part of a bigger mystery.  maybe i really am just losing my mind._

_anyways, my hp seems tied to my emotional state.  it was up for a while, i remember that part, but it dropped back down pretty quick.  heh.  if it weren’t for paps, i’d probably be dead.  when the kid went missing last week because he just had to go visit his friend in waterfall i_ _felt_ _it in my bones.  i checked myself after i found him and realized that i’d dropped half a point of hp.  i was down to fractions.  how is that even possible?  even the weakest attack takes a full point of hp off.  that’s why we use that unit of measurement, after all._

_either way, my own experiments suggest that if i ever do lose someone important to me, i’ll need to act quick if i want to save myself.  a dose of that dt stuff                            messed around with might do the trick.  the hard part’s gonna be injecting it.  can’t exactly reach my own soul, and can’t draw it out without an encounter.  cutting my own ribs open doesn’t seem like a great option, but i think if i’m careful i’d be able to do it before my hp drops all the way.  the real problem is that there’s no way to tell what a safe level of dt is for me._

_without g’s notes, i’m boned._

_gotta tell that one to the door lady.  or...maybe not.  too depressing._

Finally, something useful!!  Okay, yeah, it was kinda horrible - she handed her mother a dishtowel for her tears - but it explained why Sans had been trying to saw his own chest open.

He hadn’t been trying to kill himself; he’d been trying to _save_ himself.  Maybe.  Probably?  Her brain worked overtime, putting all the pieces of this strange puzzle together.

Sans and his girlfriend had broken up a month ago, according to him.  Something had happened between then and when he disappeared to make his situation deteriorate.  She thought back to her own loneliness when he’d stopped hanging out with her regularly.  It might have been something as simple as that; his HP was so fragile that, combined with everything else, then the accumulated loneliness might have been the tipping point.  Then he’d tried to fix the problem - _by himself,_ like the dingus that he was - and something had gone wrong.  Either he’d miscalculated when _sawing through his own ribcage_ or something had startled him, and he’d…

Well.  Now they knew what the problem was, at least.

“My child?  It looks like you have figured something out?”

Frisk signed her theory to her mother, leaving out the part where she’d gone back in time to undo her friend’s horrific death.

“I see.  That...is terribly sad to think about, but given what we know it makes sense.  Hopefully our friend will be willing to answer some questions when he awakens.  Speaking of which, I believe it is well past your bedtime.”

Frisk looked at the clock.  It had only been around 7:00 when they’d left for the skeleton brothers’ home, but after the long drive and all the drama it was nearly midnight.

*Yeah.  I’d better head to bed.  Goodnight, Mom.*

“Good night, Frisk.  I love you.”

*Love you too.*

She accepted the nose-nuzzle and returned it with a kiss on her mother’s cheek, then stored the binder in her inventory and went upstairs.

It was quickly apparent that sleep would not be coming anytime soon.  The small noises in the old house - usually so easily dismissed - haunted her.  Every creak was the creak of a rib under pressure; every rattling of branches against the side of the house were bones rattling in fear.  The whine of wind through the trees were small cries of pain.

She wasn’t one to give up, but after tossing and turning for what seemed like hours Frisk checked her phone.  1:10 AM.  She could almost taste the exhaustion she was going to be facing the next day.

Then again, she’d already suffered through those classes once already.  She still had...okay, so she _didn’t_ have notes from her classes, but she mostly remembered them, right?  She leapt out of bed (quietly!) and turned on the lamp over her desk.  Jotting down as many notes as she could remember from her classes took only half an hour, and while it helped settle her mind she still felt jittery.

Re-reading the book portions of her assignments was going to be necessary, but she couldn’t focus.  Exercise wasn’t a good idea, since everyone else was (hopefully) asleep.  She did a few sit-ups, just on principle, before getting an idea.

It was easy to pull the Wingdings site back up on her computer so she had more screen room.  Collecting sticky notes from her backpack and the binder from her inventory, she got to work.

Translation got easier as she went.  It helped that Wingdings was simply a one-to-one character swap from English, so there were none of the grammatical, tense, or style concerns involved in translating one language to another.  There weren’t many fragments that had survived whatever censorship had erased most of the notes, but after scouring the pages for an hour or so she managed to put little sticky-note translations next to each.

It was, she decided as she drifted off, time well spent.

And if she _kinda_ regretted staying up so late when her alarm blared long and loud the next morning, well, nothing good in life is free.  She shut her alarm off quickly, not wanting to wake up her houseguests, but the telltale clanging of pots and pans from downstairs let her know that Papyrus at least was already up.

She pulled on clean clothes blearily, sticking to jeans and a sweater because she was too tired to bother with fashion.  Thankfully, Toriel wasn’t around to roll up the sleeves for her.  She didn’t usually wear makeup unless she was on TV, both because she didn’t want to bother with it and to help her blend in, so the only thing she really had to worry about were her teeth and hair.  She brushed both, slipped on a headband, and quietly peeked into the guest bedroom.

Sans was still asleep, sprawled loosely on the bed.  There was a bright orange sticky note tacked to the side of his skull with familiar handwriting on it, but Frisk decided not to read it.  Whatever Papyrus wrote was probably private.  Instead, she gently placed his binder on the bedside table and tiptoed out of the room.

Both Papyrus _and_ Toriel were involved in some kind of competitive breakfast-making.  Toriel was making pancakes, much to the skeleton’s consternation, so he’d settled for trying to add extra ingredients while she wasn’t looking.  Cinnamon and chocolate chips were tolerated - heck, Frisk even approved - but she intervened when he went for the paprika.

“But…” he protested, dragging her through the kitchen as she clung to his arm with both hands.  “Undyne always says that spice is necessary in a new recipe!!  How else can we taste the passion in our cooking?”

“Breakfast doesn’t need to be quite that passionate!  We already have cinnamon!  We don’t need any more spice...or fires…and don’t you remember what your professor taught you about human-style cooking?”

A skeleton as large and skinless as Papyrus should not be able to pout as effectively as he did, Frisk thought.  Regardless, she managed to stall him long enough for her mother to finish cooking the cinnamon-chocolate pancakes and put them safely on plates.

They were actually quite good, she thought as she bit in.  There was a funny taste - extra baking powder, maybe? - but it wasn’t too bad.  She complimented the cooking, ignoring her mother’s rueful smile and Papyrus’s grumblings about the lack of breakfast spaghetti.

“We can try breakfast spaghetti tomorrow,” Toriel said.  It was a testament to Papyrus’s much-improved cooking skills that such an offer had been made at all, really.  “Frisk needs to leave for school now, or she’ll be late.”

Sans had not made an appearance by the time Frisk finally escaped her home.  She tried not to read too much into that.  Between exhaustion and worry, her day seemed to drag by.  At least she was able to supplement her notes, which was great.  She didn’t think she’d actually _remember_ much of that particular set of classes.

How ironic.  She could remember lives she’d never lived in worlds she’d never touched, but she sometimes couldn’t remember what happened in classes she actually needed to pay attention to.

She was pretty sure she’d accidentally brushed off some of her friends, running home like her tail was on fire, but they’d definitely noticed that something was up.  Thankfully, it was a Friday, so she had a whole weekend to figure out how to make amends.

“HEYA, PUNK!” was the greeting that met her - red-faced and panting - as she staggered through the front door of her home.  She was immediately swept into a ~~chokehold~~ hug.

“Hey, Undyne,” she wheezed.  “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Your mom told me you had company!  I haven’t seen Paps in AGES!  WHAT KIND OF A FRIEND DO YOU THINK I AM???”

“Hck!!”

“WHAT WAS THAT, PUNK??”

Toriel, summoned by the noise, poked her head out of the kitchen.  “Undyne, dear, I believe my child cannot breathe with your arms around her neck like that.  Her face is looking a little red.”

“NGAAAAAAAH!!”

Thankfully, the former captain apparently decided that strangulation was too merciful for the demands of FRIENDSHIP!!! and let Frisk down.

*Thanks,* she signed, still trying to regain her breath.  *Have you been here long?*

“Nah.  Your mom brought me home with her.  It’s real handy that we work at the same school, right??”

Frisk agreed that it was.  Middle school had been awkward with her mom for a teacher and her best friend for an uber-aggressive PE coach, but it definitely made for an interesting commute.

*Where _is_ Papyrus?* she asked.

“Probably looking after his lazybones brother.  Heard he was sick ‘r something?  That loser needs to work out more!”

*Sans...really isn’t feeling well.*

“...Oh.”  There must have been something on her face, because Undyne instantly sobered.  “Uh, sorry.  You know I don’t...I don’t have anything against the guy.”

*Yeah.*

And it was true after all, wasn’t it?  Undyne was a regular guest at Sans’s house, and they got along fine, but that was mostly for Papyrus’s sake.  They were the kind of acquaintances brought together by mutual, aggressive affection for the same person.  

A rustling at the top of the stairs made both of them look up.  Sans stood there, leaning against the banister.  He looked tired, his eye sockets half-closed and one of Toriel’s quilts draped over his shoulders, but much better than he had the night before.  Papyrus was hovering over him like a tall, gangly mother hen.

For once, Undyne was quiet.

*Hey, Sans,* Frisk signed, catching his gaze.

*hey, kiddo,* he signed back.  *heard fish-lady.*

“HEY!”  Undyne interjected.

He shifted a little, but not enough to hide his hands from the peeved former captain.  *need a rescue?*

*Sure,* Frisk responded, making sure her hands were not visible to Undyne.

“paps, why don’tcha go jogging with undyne?  i’ve gotta ask the kid something.”

Papyrus looked conflicted.  “BUT…”

There was a calculating look in Undyne’s eye.  “Sure, we’ll go jogging, won’t we, Paps?  AND THEN, SOMEONE CAN TELL ME WHAT THE FLIP IS GOING ON!!!”

And then she was out the door, dragging Papyrus behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact of the chapter: the searches Frisk performs are as accurate as I could make them. I basically tried a bunch of search terms, figured out what got me to a Wingdings site, and wrote that segment of the scene around it.
> 
> I hope this chapter answers some questions folks have! We still have more PLOT to cover, but things are looking up! Right?


	7. Our Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sans and Frisk have a talk, and we get a little bit more by way of explanations.

Toriel popped her head out of the kitchen just in time to see her PE teacher leap out the front door, a skeleton flying after her like a particularly boney kite.  “Oh, dear,” she said.  “And I just started a pot of her favorite tea, too.  Anyways, are you two going upstairs, Sans?”

“yeah,” Sans said.  “i had a question for the kid, if that’s alright.”

“Very well.  But do not think  _ our _ discussion is finished, either.”

Frisk followed Sans into the guest bedroom and closed the door behind her.  The boxes were mostly empty now, folded flat and stacked under one of the beds.  Papyrus must have been working all day on getting settled.

“why don’tcha come sit down?”  Sans asked, collapsing onto the bed he’d been sleeping on.

Frisk nodded and made her way towards the other bed.  Halfway there she tripped over something, which was a surprise given how clean the room was.  She picked it up on instinct.

Sans’s wallet flopped open in her hand, his ID visible.  She couldn’t help herself; she checked the birthdate on it.

...He was only five years older than she was??  But…

“heh.”  He was watching her, his usual smile twisted into something genuinely amused.

She blushed, handing him back his wallet.  *Sorry.*

“eh, no problem.  no secrets there.”

*I didn’t know your birthday; you don’t throw a party.  I’ll have to plan you one next year.*

“well, uh, the only thing i really knew was the year; i just made up the date.  so...whatever floats your boat.”

She giggled, folding herself onto the other bed, but her mind was reeling.

He was  _ 23? _  He...he could go to  _ college _ with her in the Fall and still pretty much fit right in, at least as much as Sans fit in anywhere.  Would he want to?  Did he need to?  He knew  _ so much; _ realizing that he was only five years older than she was made her feel stupid, especially since he seemed to spend most of his time slacking off while she spent what felt like half her life studying.

“your mom’s kinda nosy, isn’t she?” he asked, tossing his wallet from one hand to the other.

*Yeah.  She doesn’t know how to let anything go, really, but that’s how you know she cares about you.  Was she bothering you?*

“uh, not really.  just had some awkward questions about the...y’know.”  He gestured to where the binder still sat on the table beside his bed.  “that was, uh, pretty impressive what you did there.  i hope you didn’t stay up too late with that.”

Frisk cleared her throat and folded her hands in her lap.  She didn’t know how to explain the intricacies of computer fonts in sign language.  “Not really.  I...this is going to sound weird, but I just looked up the font on a website and translated it.”

“...what?”

“The font?  It’s called Wingdings.”

Sans jerked upright and stared at her.   _ “what?” _

She pulled up the site she’d found on her phone and passed it to him.  The lights in his eye sockets scanned the chart, looking dumbfounded.

“It was luck I found it, really; I didn’t know what it was called.  But...hey, you can find anything on the internet these days.”

“...yeah.”  It didn’t sound like he’d heard anything she said.  The hands holding her phone were shaking a little, barely noticeable except for how closely she was watching him.  After a long moment he looked up and met her eyes.  “i...this is...i don’t even know what to say.”

“It looked like you’d been trying to translate your notes for a while.”

“uh.  yeah.  it was kinda...kinda my life’s work for a few years there.”

No wonder he was so blown away.  From his perspective, she’d accomplished in a few hours what he’d been working on for a good chunk of his life.  It made her feel guilty, even if she’d done nothing wrong.  “I just...I’m sorry if it upset you; I thought it would help.”

“kiddo.  kid.  frisk.  this...this is  _ amazing. _  i’m...well, sure, it feels a little like i tried to reinvent the wheel, but now - after all this time - i know what it says, y’know?  this is...i don’t even have words for it.  just... _ thank you.” _

He looked like he was about to cry, and Frisk didn’t know what to do.  “Well...I’m glad it helped you, at least.”

He nodded.

“You...did you want to talk about something?”

He took a deep breath (or the mimicry of one) and composed himself.  “uh, yeah.  i was wondering about something, actually.  i woke up this morning with the weirdest case of deja vu.”

_ Oh, crab biscuits. _

“was wonderin’ if you had anything to do with that.”

Deciding to aim for truthfulness, Frisk gulped.  *Yes,* she signed, willing her hands not to shake.

His eye sockets seemed to search her face.  “i see.”

There was an awkward pause as neither of them was willing to talk.  It felt like everything was bubbling inside Frisk’s throat, fighting to get out, and then it  _ burst- _

“You were  _ dust, _ and Papyrus was-”

“i’m not  _ mad-” _

They looked at each other, then Sans gestured towards Frisk.  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and continued.  “Papyrus called Mom and I last...no, wait, it actually would’ve been...tonight?  It was around 6.”  She looked at her phone on instinct.  It was only 5:45.  “He was really upset.  Whatever you were trying to do went horribly wrong.  He heard something and broke into your room, but you just...dusted right there in front of him.”

“i...see.  it’s just...it’s kinda messed up that you reset the entire  _ world _ back a day just to save me, y’know.”

“It was worth it.”

“kid-”

“No.  Sans.   _ It was worth it. _  No one else got hurt by this.  No one else even knows.  We’ve talked about this, remember?  Sure, some people get a little bit of deja vu, but it saved your life.  Now you get a second chance.  And...I know you don’t like that I’m able to do this, but I can’t be sorry about that.”

Sans glanced away, staring at nothing, and she waited for him.  Finally, he said, “okay.”

“Okay?”

“guess i can’t argue with that.”  The way he said it sounded more defeated than anything.

“Well.  You  _ could, _ but I still think I’m right.”

“heh.  fair enough.  y’know, i thought you’d found some of my notes, and that’s why you showed up.  didn’t realize...”

*Yeah.*

They sat in companionable silence for a bit until Toriel called them downstairs.  At the table they found a teapot of golden flower tea and a plate of warm sugar cookies, fresh from the oven.  Sans helped himself to a cookie, accepted the mug of tea Frisk poured for him, and retreated into the depths of the quilt.

“How was school today, my child?”  Toriel asked, pointedly ignoring the bundle of bones and fabric.

Frisk took a bite of cookie.  *It was pretty good.  Things are winding down now, getting ready for spring break.  Which is great - not as much homework - but it means the classes are getting a little boring.*

“That is unfortunate, but I am glad to see you taking it easy for a while.  You are usually so busy.”

*Yeah.*

“Have you heard back from any of the schools you’ve applied to?”

She shifted in her seat.  With everything else that had happened, she’d forgotten.  *I got a couple rejection letters this week.*

“Oh, my child…”

*It’s fine, really.  Those schools were long shots, anyways.  Literally  _ and _ figuratively; they’re hardly next door.  I would’ve had to take some time off work to attend, and I would’ve missed you all.*

“Still, if you wanted to attend I am sorry you were not accepted.  Rejection is painful, regardless of circumstances.”

*Yes.*  And she  _ was not _ going to cry over something like that with Sans sitting at the table.

“Did they say why you were rejected?”

She fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve.  “Oh.  Uh, academics.  My grades aren’t quite up to what they’d like them to be, and I don’t qualify for affirmative action.  One said they would give me special consideration since I’m an ambassador, but I’d rather get in on my own merits.  Accepting something like that would seem like stealing to me, like taking something I didn’t earn.”

“But you do an enormous amount of work as our ambassador.  Surely, you’ve earned some leeway because of that?”

“Yeah, but this isn’t like the time that hotel put us in a nicer room because they realized we were public figures.  This is getting into a  _ school. _  If they’re looking for people who can do a certain level of coursework and I can’t do it, then I’m only going to make myself look bad.  I mean, I get it.  Grades are hardly the most important thing in my life; they never have been.  I think it would be better to let that spot go to someone who  _ is _ focused on academics, someone who can become a lawyer or a doctor or something and do some real good with it.

“Most of what I’ll do with my degree I need to learn hands-on, anyways.  Honestly, I’d rather just accept that one online offer at that college out west and do my coursework on weekends or in the evenings.  They’ll accept my AP credits so I wouldn’t have to take as many core classes.  I would still be  _ here, _ where I’m needed, and I could dedicate more of my time to the embassy.”

“That is...very noble of you, my child.  I will not deny that we will appreciate the help.  Still, I do not want you to lose opportunities for our sake.”

“Mom, I love you.  I love you  _ all. _  And sometimes, love means sacrificing things.  Are there things I won’t be able to do because I’m the Ambassador for Monsters?  Yeah, of course; but that’s  _ my  _ choice.  No one’s taking anything from me, I’m giving it up willingly.”

A pair of white dots was clearly visible from the depths of the quilt, watching her evenly.  She tried not to stare.  If Sans wanted to talk about something, he could ask her properly without being all creepy in the shadows.  He didn’t say anything, though; just snuck a hand out and swiped a couple more cookies.

The dork.

“I hope we can honor your sacrifice, then,” Toriel was saying.  “I am not complaining, but it does seem like you have given us far more than we can ever hope to repay.”

“It’s...fine?  Mom, what is this about?  We’re family.  Family doesn’t count the cost, remember?  I’m a big girl.  You raised me right.  Please trust me when I say that this is  _ exactly _ where I want to be.”

Toriel smiled brilliantly, the way she rarely did in anything but really old pictures, and opened her mouth…

“WE’RE HOME, PUNKS!”  Undyne yelled.  She’d remembered not to slam the door open, at least.

Papyrus jogged in behind her, breathing heavily and shaking his legs.  “UNDYNE, WE FORGOT TO DO A COOL-DOWN LAP!”

“We don’t need a cool-down lap!”

“MY LEGS WILL CRAMP!”

“you don’t have muscles, bro; you can’t cramp,” said the quilt puddle.

“YOU WOULDN’T KNOW, BROTHER!  YOU HARDLY WALK AROUND YOUR OWN HOUSE!”

“heh.”

There was an awkward pause as Papyrus very visibly remembered that Sans wasn’t quite feeling well and  _ maybe _ shouldn’t be teased as harshly as he usually was.

“oh, c’mon,” Sans said, finally poking his head out of his hiding place.  “it’s not that bad, really.”

“YOU LOCKED YOURSELF IN YOUR ROOM FOR A WEEK!  YOU CALLED IN SICK TO ALL YOUR JOBS!  YOU WERE...BEING VERY UNKIND TO YOURSELF!”

Undyne looked from one brother to the other.  “Sans?  What does he mean?”

He looked like he was about to huddle back under the quilt, but after a long moment, he sighed instead.  “i’m not doin’ too great.  it’s a weird condition.  it’s a bit like falling down, but a...slower process.  oh, don’t look at me like that; i thought i had it under control.”

“YOU HAD INJURIES ALL UP AND DOWN YOUR ARMS, AND YOU WERE DOING SOMETHING TO YOUR RIBCAGE!”

“...trying to inject something into my soul, yeah.  it just didn’t turn out the way i’d expected.  and the other stuff...well, i kinda got into a fight.”

“A FIGHT?”

Frisk exchanged a bewildered glance with her mother.  A  _ fight? _  Sans dodged conflict with ease and grace befitting a veteran matador.  Where would he have found the time (or the  _ motivation) _ to get into a fight??

Sans shrugged, one finger tracing the rim of his mug.  “it...uh, was kinda my fault.  so.  i ran into terry’s brother when i was out and about, and he took exception with the way that relationship ended.”  He ignored Undyne’s frantic gesturing as she tried to come up to speed on how and why he was now single.  “he said some things he probably regrets, and  _ i _ said some things i  _ know _ i regret, and then...i just kinda...panicked, i guess?  i don’t remember what happened, exactly, but i wasn’t thinking very clearly.  next thing i remember this guy is pinning me to the ground, yelling at me to ‘snap out of it,’ and my hands and the back of my head hurt like heck.  from what i pieced together, i...i guess i attacked him.”

“BUT...THAT MAKES NO SENSE??  HOW COULD SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPEN?”

“i dunno, bro.  i’ve been thinking it over ever since.  i...i don’t want to hurt anyone.  terry’s bro was fine, and he felt bad about what happened to  _ me, _ but he was just defending himself.  what else could he do?  i was a threat to him.  he clearly didn’t mean any harm to me, or i’d be dust.  he just didn’t realize how...fragile i am.”

Papyrus picked his brother up, quilt and all.  “I AM SORRY THAT YOU HAD TO GO THROUGH THAT, SANS.  I AM ALSO NOT SURE WHAT HAPPENED, OR WHY YOU THINK YOU ATTACKED HIM, BUT I AM SURE THAT IT WAS AN ACCIDENT AND YOU CAN NOW BE GOOD FRIENDS!”

Frisk wrapped her arms around both of them as far as they could go.  “You should have said something,” she said.  “We would’ve helped you out.”

_ “Any _ of us would have,” Toriel agreed.  Her hug encompassed Frisk and both skeleton brothers easily.

Undyne clearly wanted to either argue or interrogate Sans for his unauthorized change in relationship status, but she just sighed and joined the hug pile instead.  “Nerds,” she growled, but it sounded affectionate.

A moment later, Frisk felt herself engulfed by another set of arms.  “I am glad to see that we are all getting along,” Asgore said.  “Golly, what a nice thing to come home to!”

“Hello, dear.”  Toriel was sounding a little muffled.  “How was your trip?”

“Oh, very nice.  Hawaii is lovely this time of year.  Isn’t it nice that those humans decided to have their meeting in such a warm place?  And they have the best clothes!”

_ “Dear, _ if you left your suit behind again so you could bring more Hawaiian shirts…”

“Of course not, snail-biscuit!”  There was a collective groan from the center of the cuddle pile.  Everyone was all too uncomfortably aware that a side effect of Asgore and Toriel’s mending relationship was a tendency towards awkward, sappy nicknames.  If they got started, it could go on for hours.  “I remembered to bring a second suitcase, so I used that!”

Frisk could feel her mother’s indecision.  On the one hand, they were hardly fashionable and it was a stereotypically Dad-like thing to do.  On the other, it was hard enough finding shirts in Asgore’s size that such a trove of clothing could hardly be scoffed at, and finding shirts he  _ liked _ and could wear casually was a perpetual struggle.  In the end, she let it go.  “I’m glad you are home safe, at least.”

Asgore hummed.

It took a good fifteen minutes to extract everyone from the hug of sappy doom.  By that time, Undyne had to run; she and Alphys had an anime marathon planned.  She dashed out the door, screaming dire threats of suplexing and noogies if the ‘emotional constipation’ continued.  Papyrus was the only one who took this seriously, though Asgore looked a little worried.

“So,” the king said, once he’d been settled at the table with a giant mug of golden flower tea and a small tower of sugar cookies, “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit, boys?  It’s been a while since either of you were over.”

Frisk cringed at the slight tone of accusation in her dad’s voice.

“SANS IS FEELING UNWELL, AND FRISK AND LADY TORIEL OFFERED TO LET US STAY HERE!  BUT I THOUGHT YOUR MEETING WAS GOING FOR A FEW MORE DAYS?.”

“Yes, well, there was a storm expected in the area so we wrapped things up early.  We didn’t want to get caught on the island indefinitely, especially since so many of the support staff have homes and families that need preparation.  I offered to stay to help, but…” he gave an awkward shrug and took a delicate nibble of a cookie.  It looked comically small in his giant paw.

Frisk shook her head sadly.  Her father had taken full responsibility for the demise of the human children who had fallen before her, and although many people understood, he still faced a good deal of distrust.  It was also heartbreaking to see people turn down his help because they assumed that he was so large he’d be in the way, or that he was too stupid to understand the complexity of an emergency situation.

He’d ruled an entire civilization for centuries under some of the most dire circumstances imaginable.  He was kind, and gentle, and ruthlessly protective  when pushed, but he was far from  _ stupid. _

She realized she’d zoned out of the conversation when Sans nudged her knee from across the table with one slippered foot.  Her father was giving a general overview of the more social aspects of his visit - who he’d seen, what they’d said to him, what restaurants he’d eaten at.  He pulled out his phone (it was a custom-made one the size of a tablet, and had a stylus tethered to it just in case he had trouble with the screen) and showed off a few pictures.  The one Frisk liked best showed her dad and an absolutely enormous man, both in Hawaiian shirts, giving shakas in front of a restaurant.

“This is a gentleman by the name of Kahiau , who owns this restaurant.  He was very accommodating.  As it turns out, he used to be a sumo wrestler; he is very familiar with the struggles one experiences when one is substantially larger than others.  He was of enormous help in locating shirts of my size.  Oh, I suppose that was funny,” he said, over the chuckles that ensued.

“That reminds me, Frisk.  His daughter Hokulani is a huge fan of yours.  She makes leis for a living and wanted to send one, but was unable to send the traditional flower one due to the obvious travel constraints.  Instead, she sent this.”

Asgore opened his inventory and pulled out something that looked like a short rope of pink and cream-colored beads.  As he handed it over, Frisk gasped.  The ‘beads’ were, in fact, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny snail shells, each uniquely beautiful.

“These are ka...kahe ...hmm.  I have it written down somewhere; forgive me.  Ah!  ‘Kahelelani,’ they are called.  The art of collecting and sewing these shells into leis is rare, and one passed down to Hokulani from her now-deceased mother.  It is a terribly long and complicated process.  She wanted you to have this as a sign of friendship and goodwill.”

Frisk felt her eyes filling with tears, her fingers running over the shells.  She could feel the love that went into making such a complex and beautiful item.  “Thank you for passing it on.  I wish there was a way to thank her in person.  Do you know her last name?  I might be able to run a search, see if I can find her on-”

He laughed.  “Oh, that’s not necessary; she gave me her email address to pass on to you!”

_ Thanks, Dad. _

Frisk passed the lei around, still marveling at the craftsmanship.  She would’ve thought a shell necklace would be spikey, but any points on the tiny shells had been turned towards the inside of the rope.  The tiny ribbons of color on each shell and the alternation of different shades of pink and pale almost-white made the shells look almost like scales from a distance, giving it the appearance of a delicately patterned snake.

She made a note to dig her red dress out of the back of her closet to wear at her next public appearance.  Having a snake around her neck sounded  _ badass. _

Her admiration of her gift was interrupted by a low, rumbling noise like a localized earthquake.  Back before she’d fallen into the Underground such a sound would’ve concerned her, but she knew  _ exactly _ what that was.

So did Toriel, who sighed and stood from the table.  “I suppose I shall start supper.  Papyrus?  Do you wish to help?”

The skeleton in question was up and in the kitchen before she finished the offer.

Sans, who had been abruptly displaced by this turn of events, looked wide-eyed at Asgore.  “that was...something.”

“Oops,” the king replied, doing his best to hide behind his mug.

Frisk shook her head and retreated into the kitchen to help contain the chaos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Fun fact of the chapter: I spent most of my childhood in Hawaii. I'm not actually kama'aina (I wasn't born in Hawaii) nor am I kanaka (native Hawaiian), but I will always have a deep love of the culture. That said: here, have a pineapple. 10 internet points if you can figure out why.
> 
> Some more cultural notes:  
> \- "Kahiau" is a name meaning "extremely generous."  
> \- "Hokulani" is a name meaning "divine star."  
> \- The shaka, or "hang loose sign," is made by taking a fist and extending the thumb and pinky. Yes, everyone really does it.  
> \- Kahelelani shells [are a](http://www.niihauheritage.org/shells.htm) [real thing,](http://www.manandmollusc.net/Niihau/Leptothyra-verruca.html) and [leis made from them](https://www.kauaishellsandmorestore.com/listing/505496172/shell-lei-puka-shell-lei-rare-shells) do look absolutely amazing in person. Most of them are made with shells from the island of Ni'ihau (the 'forbidden island,' open only to 100% native Hawaiians) so they're sometimes called ["Ni'ihau leis."](http://www.kauaicurators.com/gallery/authentic-niihau-shell-lei/) The kahelelani shells can actually be classified as gems, due to their beautiful appearance and rarity, and are worth more per ounce than gold. I've never even touched one because they are REALLY expensive, so this is no small gift Frisk has been given.
> 
> Now if you'll 'scuse me, I'm gonna go bask in Bruddah Iz until it's time to post the next chapter.


	8. When My Walls Fall Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A significant issue is dealt with, a complex machine is built, and everyone starts healing.

The next few days were calm after the initial excitement of Asgore’s return.  During that time he was brought up-to-date on the most pressing issues from both the embassy and his household, but there was a certain priority order.  There were several world leaders who needed meetings at odd hours to wrap up what couldn’t be covered in person, delaying a more detailed explanation of the skeleton brother’s plight.

It was sheer bad luck that Toriel was working late when Frisk got around to telling her dad all about the contents of Sans’s binder.

“Golly,” Asgore said, “That’s awful.  I’ll ask if he’s willing to let the Royal Science Department take a look at him; there have been plenty of advancements in healing over the years, and maybe the contents of his binder will help us as well.  If nothing else we should have better luck stabilizing him than he’s had on his own.”

“I hope he agrees,” Frisk said.  “He’s so secretive a lot of the time.  It’s hard to tell how he’ll react.”

“Yes, that is problematic.  How has he been holding up, in the meantime?”

“Mom’s been dousing him with healing magic, and it looks like he’s stable for now.  He’s dropping HP in little bits and pieces, but not so much that it’s dangerous as long as he gets a good night’s sleep.  As for the emotional side of things, Papyrus has hardly left his side.  Undyne drags him out sometimes but only when Sans is sleeping, like tonight.”

“Aah, I was wondering why she was inquiring about Sans’s sleeping habits when she showed up.  That was very unlike her.  Still...what a mess.  Sans does not have the best luck with dating, does he?  First you, and now Terry...”

“what?”

Frisk felt stiff and cold as she turned around.  Sans was standing in the doorway looking very confused.  Shoot.   _ Shoot. _  They’d been quiet, trying to let him sleep; how long had he been up?

The proper thing to do would be to stay and explain things, but...she felt like the bottom of her world was falling out.  Tell him, or lie?  He’d know if she lied, but would he know why?  She didn’t know if she could stay calm-

Her dad’s hand rested on her shoulder.  “Frisk, please go out back for a moment.  I believe I have something to discuss with Sans.”

She nodded, but it felt like she was using someone else’s head.  Her ears were ringing.  Later, she would barely remember the walk from the living room through the kitchen and out into the back yard, but that was where she found herself.

It had been warm lately, the breath of spring melting all but the deepest piles of snow.  Frisk sat in the cool, dry grass and put her head on her knees.  Golly, what a  _ mess. _  It was bad enough when it had just been her and her family and friends, but now  _ Sans _ knew.  Or would know.  Was knowing?

Point being, this was her worst fear about this particular situation.  Things were never going to be the same after this.  He was going to know all about her stupid,  _ stupid _ little crush and the fact that she’d thought they were  _ dating… _

And LOADing her last save was hardly an option.  She hadn’t felt very DETERMINED since the night she’d rescued Sans, and she couldn’t risk going back to then.  What if something went wrong?  What if he realized what was happening and accelerated what he was trying to do to himself?  What if she didn’t make it in time?

As much as she didn’t want to be in this situation, she just couldn’t risk Sans dying (again) to get out of it.

She laid back on the grass, arms and legs akimbo, and tried to calm her racing heart.  What was it her therapist had told her?  She tried to remember the wording of the phrase.  ‘This, too, shall pass’ or something like that.  She’d freed monsters from the Underground.  She’d survived five years of ever-increasing political duties.  Heck, she was about ready to graduate from high school.  There was little she couldn’t accomplish.

She looked up, past the rooftop and the trees.  The stars were out.  They never changed, did they?  Sure, Earth rotated and she got to see new ones, but the view was the same every year.  Sans probably had more information on that - about how stars grow and die but we don’t see it because  _ blah blah _ speed of light - but in that moment, she could believe that the sight before her was permanent.  Eternal.

She was filled with DETERMINATION.  There was a note of finality to her SAVE that wasn’t usually present.  There would be no going back.

Eventually, the back door opened and Sans let himself out.  He flopped over in the grass next to her, spread-eagled.  “so.”

She cleared her throat on instinct, and it hurt a little.  “Dad told you.”

“yeah.”

He sounded calm.  Why did he sound so calm?  “I’m sorry.”

_ “sorry?” _

“I-”

He propped himself up to get a better look at her.  “do you have any idea how angry your dad is about this whole thing?  he’s practically ready to dust me!  it’s bad enough that he’s - well - your  _ dad, _ and he ‘n i are friends, but he’s also the king of monsters and my  _ boss. _  i’ve gotta work with him on pretty much a daily basis.”

“I’m  _ sorry, _ Sans.  I was stupid, I had everything all wrong, and I really thought you did like me back!  I don’t know what else to say.”

He seemed to gather himself, visibly calming down.  He slowly lowered himself back onto the grass.  “don’t...worry about it.  i guess i’m at fault, too.  lookin’ back...i did flirt with you, after all.  i can see how you’d be led on.  that wasn’t...just...i’m sorry too.”

It was good to hear him admit it.  “If I may ask: why did you?  No offense, but you don’t really seem like the flirting type.”

“heh.  it’s...stupid.  i really do think you’re a cool gal, y’know?  and you flirt with other people all the time, so i thought, hey, what’s the harm?  i never meant to make you think that it was serious.  we...uh, never talked about it.  it doesn’t exonerate me, exactly, but that was my excuse at the time.”

“I should’ve brought it up, too.  I guess I just...saw what I wanted to see.”

“i guess we both did.”

The silence between them was more peaceful than it had been in months, and Frisk found that she didn’t want to break it.

“so...you wouldn’t be opposed to dating an old bag of bones, hmm?”

“Sans…”

“i didn’t peg you for the type.  heh.  kinky.”

“Sans, you’re ruining the moment.”

“now you sound like my brother.  does that make  _ me _ the weirdo?”

“Sans, we were having happy friend times and getting complicated feelings off our chests.  Why do you do this?”

“i guess i just felt the need to tickle your funnybone.  that’s what you get for being friends with a skeleton.”

She groaned good-naturedly into her elbow as he laughed at his own joke.  Well, at least he wasn’t angry.

Yet.

There  _ was _ one more explanation she owed him.  Might as well do everything at once, right?

She took a deep breath.  “Hey, Sans?”

His laughter stopped.  He looked over at her, his grin fading back to his usual smile.  “you, uh, okay over there?”

“I have an awkward question to ask.”

“more awkward than relationship drama?”

“Yeah.”

“woah.  sounds serious.  okay, hit me up.”

“Have you ever had a dream where you were another version of you?  Like, a you that made different choices or faced different circumstances?”  She watched as his face tensed and the little lights in his eye sockets guttered out.  Even his perpetual grin seemed like more of a grimace.  It took all her DETERMINATION to keep looking at him, lying on his back next to her, when he looked - quite literally - like a nightmare.  Her voice cut out, leaving her with just a whisper.  “Because...um, I have.”

He was breathing a little too quickly for her liking.  She didn’t know if skeletons could hyperventilate, or what effect that had on them, but Sans seemed to be giving it his best effort.

She took a deep breath of her own, trying to get her voice back.  “Sans?  I’m sorry for asking, but...can you please calm down?  You’re scaring me.”

He closed his eye sockets for a moment, then opened them again.  They were still empty.  His breath devolved into little hitching gasps, then slowly -  _ slowly _ \- evened out again.

“you...you see alternate timelines?”

“I dunno.  Maybe?  It’s been happening since I got everyone out of the Underground, but I never see other-mes on the surface.  They’re al-always in the Underground.”

“what do you see?”  He sounded urgent, almost panicked.

“I, um, I see myself, mostly.  Going through the Underground.  Sometimes it happens pretty much like it actually did - or, I guess, like it did  _ here _ in this, um, timeline.  I go through the Underground, break the barrier and help everyone escape.  Sometimes I see little things I didn’t notice the first time around: that one door in Snowdin that I never could get open, or another weird door in Waterfall.  In one world I somehow managed to prank you across time and space and you gave me a key to your room, which was...a little strange.”

He snorted.  “oh?  what did you see in there?”

“It was  _ weird! _  There was a treadmill and a broken lamp with a burnt-out flashlight, and some kind of tornado thing with trash in it.  And the me in that world found a key to your basement, and there were blueprints and a machine.”

“h-huh.  that...sure  _ is  _ weird.  wow.  do you remember how you got that?”

“I don’t remember a lot about that one, but I remember something about some kind of triple-secret time-traveler code phrase you gave me.”

“i don’t have a triple-secret time-traveler code phrase, kid.”

“I am the legendary fartmaster.”

Sans  _ froze. _

“Yeah, I thought that was interesting.  I’m guessing...that’s something that’s the same between that world and this one?”

“you...frisk, how did you  _ know _ that?”

“I told you: I saw it.  I never, um, got a chance to actually see if it was something you actually knew, or if it was unique to that particular world, but...well.”

“what else do you see in these ‘dreams?’”

“Sometimes...Sans, sometimes the other mes aren’t so...peaceful.  S-sometimes they go through the Underground and...and I can  _ feel _ it, they’re so scared or  _ angry _ or-or sometimes they just don’t  _ care, _ and I don’t get it, but they...they…”

She curled up on her side away from Sans and buried her face in the crook of her elbow.  “Sometimes the other Frisks kill people. Sometimes they kill  _ everyone. _  I...I don’t get it.  I don’t understand how  _ I _ can be  _ them,  _ or  _ they _ can be  _ me, _ or however this stupid thing works.  Because, because if we’re really the same person, then that means  _ I _ could go around k-killing everyone, and not caring, and I don’t...I don’t…”

A boney hand settled in the middle of her back.  Slowly, as she lost the battle against her sobs, it began to rub her shoulder blades in calming circles.  There was nothing romantic about the situation - her gross sobbing put a kibosh on anything of that nature - but it was comforting nonetheless.

“A-and sometimes they RESET the world and do it again and again and  _ again, _ and it’s...Sans, it’s  _ terrible. _  Why would  _ any _ Frisk w-want to  _ do _ that?  Why would they k-keep people from their happy ending?”

“happy ending?”

“I...I guess that’s the word that comes to mind.  For all this, I mean.”  She gestured up to the stars.  “Us.  On the surface.  Happy...or, at least, working towards it.  Y’know,  _ not _ dead and dust in the middle of an old cave.  Happy ending.”

The hand on her back paused, then slowly resumed its circles.  After a moment, she felt Sans’s skull press against the back of her head.  “frisk...why are you tellin’ me this?”

“I thought you needed to know.  In s-some of the worst worlds, you - or the other Sanses, I guess - are the ones who stop m...stop the other Frisks.  S-sometimes you talk about timelines.  It sounded like you had studied them at some point.  I...I don’t know if that’s true here, or if you know anything about any of this, but we were just on the topic of honesty and it was something big that I’ve been keeping from  _ everyone _ for a long,  _ long _ time and-”

“woah, there.  easy, kid.  shhh.  take a deep breath and calm down.”

She did so.

“that...might have been a little  _ too _ much honesty for one night, if i’m being frank with you, but...thanks for tellin’ me.  it...answers some questions i had.”

“I thought you were Sans?”

“i...what?”

“You said you were being Frank with me.  I thought you were Sans.”  She pressed back against him a little.  “In case you forgot, I’m...maybe a little fond of you being Sans with me.”

He was silent for exactly two heartbeats, then erupted into guffaws of laughter.  His hand on the back of her shirt tightened, and he pressed his face further into her hair in a futile effort to stifle the sound.  “you...pal, we were having a  _ serious _ discussion here!  stars, what am i gonna do with you?”

“We’re even, then.  You ruined my awkward heart-to-heart earlier with puns.”

“i can’t believe you dropped all that on me then made a  _ joke.” _

“You made the joke, technically.  I just pointed it out.”

_ "stars.” _

“And...I guess, I figured I had the courage to do it now.  I know we have a lot to talk about, but…”

“...we can do that later.”

“Yeah.”

They stayed like that for longer than they should have, until Toriel called them back into the house and fed them warm slices of pumpkin pie.

It was days before Frisk could look Sans in the eye.  Her parents both noticed, but very pointedly pretended they didn’t; apparently, her dad had explained the situation.  It was a little funny, actually.  Despite Sans’s claims that Asgore was mad at him, the two were nothing but perfectly polite as far as Frisk could see.  The skeleton did offer to leave a few days after that embarrassing conversation in the back yard, but Toriel insisted - kindly, but firmly - that he and his brother live closer to town for the time being.  It was more economical and practical, she pointed out, since Sans wasn’t supposed to teleport until he’d been cleared medically.  Neither brother brought it up again, at least in Frisk’s hearing.

A week passed, then two.  Things were a little awkward between them, but not as much as she’d expected.  She felt lighter than she had in months, which helped.  She hadn’t realized just how heavy her secrets were until they were suddenly shared with another person.  And if maybe Sans was being a little more careful with his words and with how close he was to her, well, she was doing the same.

He was getting  _ better, _ too.  In addition to tests in the Royal Lab, Asgore had somehow managed to get him to go to a therapist.  He was referred to a psychologist as well and diagnosed with a laundry list of mental issues, which hit him pretty hard, but he’d relaxed a little when Frisk pointed out that it didn’t change what made him  _ Sans. _  They were things he’d been dealing with all along; he’d just never had a title to put to them until someone with letters after their name and a comfy couch had pointed them out.

He’d laughed at that.

The point being, recovery was...ongoing.  He’d had a few more outbursts of strange violence, but staying in the guest bedroom of the Dreemurr house had another advantage: there were people around who understood what was happening.  It was terrifying to see him like that, confused and tense and unable to distinguish between friend and foe, but the episodes became shorter and farther apart as he learned to cope with whatever he was seeing in his head.

That was the hard part, the coping.  Neither Sans nor Frisk had noticed any decrease in the number and intensity of their visions over time, and the constant stress built up on both of them.  The therapist - a quiet young woman with a big heart and no small amount of DETERMINATION - was smart enough to know that she was in well over her head in regards to crazy time magic, but she tried anyways.  She recommended several things before hitting on a partial success with dream journals.  Both Sans and Frisk wrote down their nightmares and compared them, and to their surprise, it helped.  It certainly took some getting used to, but being able to look back and compare their nightmares objectively helped take some of the stress and terror out of the situation.  That, and they could finally talk to each other about what was happening.

They could talk to each other about a lot of things that were taboo, before.

One such conversation took place at the end of school, right before Finals.  Frisk had taken some time off from official ambassadorial duties to focus, and even then she was swamped with work.  Sans returned home from work one Saturday afternoon to find her balanced on a stool, book in one hand and a pie pan in the other, over a contraption she’d been building all afternoon.

She saw him walk in out of the corner of her eye, and braced herself for mockery.

“uh, kid?  what’s that s’posed to be?”

“Button pusher,” she grumbled.

“uh-huh. and the pie pan is for…?”

“It’s a Rube-Goldberg machine.  Basically, I’m trying to get something to push that button - the red one way down there - which will cause a buzzer noise.”

“...that didn’t answer my question at all.”

Frisk sighed.  She’d hoped to finish up before he came home.  “This is just a prototype, okay?  A Rube-Goldberg machine is a needlessly complicated machine, so it needs to have as many parts as possible.  I’m testing different possibilities, seeing what works and what doesn’t.  I thought I could get the pie pan to tip at the right angle to drop a marble into that basket on the lever there, but it’s too unreliable.  The marble keeps missing the basket.”

“so what you’re saying is...you volunteered to make more work for yourself.  on purpose.  for fun?”

“It’s a senior class project for Physics.  My group volunteered to build this...abomination.  I was out that day for a meeting with the Japanese delegation, and I didn’t get to vote.  I thought the tea light hot air balloon race was the best proposal, but...well, that’s in the past.”

“i am so confused.”

“That’s okay.  This was a bust anyways; I’m gonna dismantle it.”

She did so, with minimal help from Sans, and took notes on her findings regarding the pie pan.  She had a meeting with her group on Monday evening and she wanted to be prepared.

“so, uh, i was hopin’ to catch you before the cavalry arrives.”

“Oh?”

“yeah.  just...a weird question.  did you, uh...did you mean it when you said you...liked me?”

She blushed, her hand stopping on the page.  That was not  _ at all _ what she thought he would ask about.  Was he going to mock her?  Sans was a great guy, but his sense of humor was a little overdeveloped sometimes.

She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and looked him in the eyes.  (Or eye sockets.  Or whatever.)  “Yes,” she said, willing her voice calm.

“yeah.  okay.  that’s...that’s, uh, good.”

“Is it?  I thought you didn’t like me back.  Despite the flirting.”

“i...didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t, but you were vague.  I’ve been thinking it over, too; I don’t think you told me the whole story.  You said you flirted with me because I flirted with everyone, which is...well, okay, upon reflection, not  _ really _ that much of an exaggeration, but the timing seems weird.  Why did you start flirting with me  _ then? _  Why start hanging out with me  _ then?” _

He looked down for a moment, fidgeting.  It was weird to see; Sans wasn’t the type to fidget.  He always seemed so deliberate in his motions, even when he was flopping over onto something.  Whether it was because of his delicate HP or because he had spent so long working around dangerous machinery, Frisk didn’t know.

“i hate to admit this, but...well.  actually, do you remember what happened right before i started walking you home from school?”

She thought back to the previous Fall.  “The chili cook-off at the embassy?”

“no, after that.”

“The Core activation?”

“before.”

“The Great Pun War in the comments section of the embassy’s website?”

“heh, that was great, wasn’t it?  your mom and i sure showed all those kids.  but nah, it was after that, too.”

“That fiasco where the kid followed Burgerpants home and cried when her parents came to pick her up?”

“n...uh, when did that happen?”

“Um...I’d have to look up dates??”

“well...it wasn’t related to that, either.  do you remember the stargazing party where i made that ‘dog stand under the table?”

“Oh, yeah!  I remember that!”

“so...um.  gosh, it sounds so stupid now to say it out loud.  you made a comment that night, when we were gettin’ ready for monopoly.  something about dust.  and...i dunno, it was like i heard every other frisk out there saying the same thing, and i thought...gosh, how lucky am i that i’m here with m...with  _ this _ frisk and not someone who’s gonna stab me in the back?

“and then the nightmares started.  they’d always been bad - i’m just prone to them, i guess - but they were...awful.  dust everywhere.  you know the kind.”

She did.

“and i wanted to see you.  i  _ needed _ to see you, to convince myself that you were  _ you _ and not any of the crazy, mass-murdering psychopaths i kept seeing.  it was nice.  you always seemed so happy, so  _ unaffected _ by anything, and it...grounded me.  kept me sane.”

“Sans…”

“sorry; i didn’t mean it...like that.  i just meant that you helped remind me that there’s good in the world.  paps helps too, but he’s so busy all the time.  heh.  some monsters complain about humans and how much attention they’re giving us, but paps is finally getting what he wants in life.”

That was certainly true.  “He deserves to be showered in praise.  Or was it kisses he wanted?”

“it was the kisses.  he told a reporter about that a few months back, y’know.  we still have bags of mouth-shaped confetti showing up on our doorstep.”

“Has he tried bathing in them yet?”

“nah, he hasn’t figured out how.”

Frisk couldn’t hold her laughter in any more.  “Well, if he needs help rigging something up, I’m becoming quite the construction expert.”

“yeah.”

Living with Sans for a few weeks made it very easy to spot the melancholy that was overtaking his expression.  “Sans, you know that even though Papyrus has more friends now he still needs you, right?”

He glanced away. “yeah, ‘course.”

She maneuvered herself into his line of sight.  “Sans.  Papyrus  _ needs _ you.  I know he doesn’t always say it, but he does.  We  _ all _ need you.”

“even when i’m a little broken?”

She reached out and put three fingers into the hand that was lying limp on his knee.  Sans’s hands were perfect for his size - now a good six inches shorter than Frisk herself - but her brain insisted that the lack of skin meant his hands should be smaller.  Still, her fingers fit perfectly under his phalanges, resting against the semi-fused grooves of bone that formed his palm.  His magic hummed slightly against her skin, reminding her that he was here and  _ alive _ and getting better every day.  “Always,” she whispered.  It felt like a promise.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, just enjoying each other’s company, until the front door opened to reveal the other inhabitants of the house returning from grocery shopping.  Frisk helped put the food away, dodging Papyrus’s energetic gestures as he recounted the tale of his adventure, but her eyes kept finding Sans’s.

Everything was going to be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And then Sans runs off and engages in a torrid [Undernovela-style](http://pig-demon.tumblr.com/tagged/undernovela/chrono) affair with the friendly therapist. The end!
> 
> (Kidding!)
> 
> Thanks for reading! This is the penultimate chapter: just one more to go.
> 
> Fun fact of the chapter: Sans doesn't blame Frisk for the time-space shenanigans. He just wishes they didn't happen.
> 
> Several people have been asking some pointed questions about certain plot points, and it has taken a lot of self-control not to answer them with the information in this chapter. I hope y'all are happy.


	9. We Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now, we finish this.

Sans continued getting better.  Time and some TLC helped his HP gradually stabilize, and there was a celebration in the Dreemurr household - with ‘dogs, of course - when he was able to announce that he hadn’t lost HP overnight for a full week.  It was a bittersweet announcement, though, since Papyrus insisted that he move back home.  It was probably for the best, really.  Papyrus and Toriel were some of the sweetest people in the world, but were both territorial when it came to the kitchen.

It was only a few weeks before Frisk’s graduation and - despite the fact that she would miss both brothers - she was grateful for the opportunity to focus.  She would still see them, she was sure of it.  Just because Sans no longer  _ needed _ her presence to focus on reality didn’t mean their friendship was null and void, after all.  And yet...it was only friendship.

It was loneliness all over again to see him leave.

In the end, she hadn’t lost him to another human, or to his jobs, or to the fraternal love he had for his brother.  No; she had lost him - she realized - to herself; to all the Frisks in all the other worlds who made stupid,  _ stupid _ choices in the name of curiosity.

She had lost him, in a way, to the strange flow of time that showed her all the infinite possibilities, good and bad, and had alerted Sans to how much better and how impossibly worse she could be.  She couldn’t tell if she was the best person Sans could possibly have befriended or the worst.

Given the way he sobbed and shuddered after some of his nightmares, she tended to believe it was the latter.

And so, she tried to give him his space.  It wasn’t hard: for all she’d told her mother that grades didn’t matter to her, it was a matter of pride for her to try her best.  She didn’t have much time for anything but eating, sleeping, and studying.

It was a surprise to her when, after dinner one night, her attention was grabbed by Sans’s name.

*What?* she signed, poking her head out of her History textbook.

“Oh!  I didn’t realize you were listening,” Asgore said.  “You have been quite focused lately.  I was merely telling your mother that Sans is doing much better.  He has agreed to a number of important tests to ensure he remains stable, and to look into the possibility of raising his base HP to something less...concerning.  He had a number of notebooks that proved extremely useful when combined with some of the advancements we’ve made here on the surface, actually; he credited you with helping to translate them.”

“I didn’t...oh, you mean they were written in Wingdings?”

He hummed.  “That could have been what the strange code was called; you know how I am with names.  Regardless, they were highly edited by some strange force, but what remained has opened new avenues for study in a number of areas.  It was only fair that Sans himself benefit from what we’ve learned, since he was the one to bring this to the attention of our scientists.”

Frisk nodded.  “Makes sense.  So...he’s volunteered to be in an experiment?”

“Oh, nothing so drastic.  Not yet, anyways.  The Royal Science team is keeping me informed, but it seems like for now they are merely trying to discover why  _ exactly _ his HP dropped so suddenly a few weeks back and what aided in his recovery.  He has theories, but we want to be sure.”

Both her parents were kind enough to keep her informed on the progress of the tests.  The first few rounds went well, apparently; she didn’t get to see the results, but they were - in her father’s words - “promising,” whatever that meant.

She thought that would be the extent of her information on the subject: third- and fourth-hand reports of vaguely-described ‘tests’ shrouded in medical jargon.  And really, as long as her friend was safe that was fine with her.

Then again, Sans rarely acted the way she expected him to.

He showed up after school, the Friday before Finals started.  He looked grim, but strangely resolved.  Like he was planning to take on the world.  If she didn’t know better, she’d say he looked…

...DETERMINED.

“heya,” he said.  His grin looked a little forced.  “it’s been a bit, hasn’t it?”

“A few weeks, yeah,” she said.  She shifted her backpack.  “I’m...glad to see you.”

“yeah, uh, me too.  i actually wanted to talk, if you have a minute.  i’ve heard you’ve been busy.”

“Finals prep is stressing me out a little, but...I’ll always have time for you.”

Maybe that wasn’t the best way to put it, but seeing Sans blush made it hard to be sorry for the poor wording.

“heh, uh, thanks.  i guess...we can walk and talk?  like old times?”

“Sure.”  She didn’t comment on the fact that ‘old times’ were just a few months back.

They walked in silence for a block or so.  The crowd around them slowly trickled off; not many of her classmates lived on Frisk’s street.  Finally, they were alone.

“so.  i...heard you’ve been asking about the tests i’ve been doing?”

“Yeah.  I wanted to make sure you were okay.  Not that I could really do much if you weren’t, but...I was worried for you.”  Another thought came to mind.  “Oh, gosh, is that creepy?  Am I being a stalker?  Sans, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to invade your privacy or anyth-”

“woah, woah, it’s fine!  i’m...a little flattered, actually, that you’d want to keep up to date.  it’s just...i thought this would be something to tell you in person, rather than hearing it from your dad or alphys or whoever’s been keeping tabs on my file for ya.”

“O-okay?”

He took a deep breath, paused, and turned to look at her.  “frisk, i’m gonna be away for a week or two.  there’s a big experiment they’re doing - part magic, part therapy, as best i’ve been told - and i want to be a part of it.  it’s...well, it’s similar to something-”

What came out of his mouth next made Frisk’s head feel fuzzy.  She perceived the words not as sound, but as...some kind of symbols, almost, imprinted in her brain.  It slowly seemed to resolve into two words:

_ DOCTOR GASTER _

“What?  Sans, what was that?  What happened?”

“oh gosh, frisk, i’m so sorry.  are you okay?”

“I...Sans, what was that?  Who’s Doc-”

“no, wait, don’t!”

“-tor Gaster?”

They stared at each other.  Frisk realized, belatedly, that maybe saying the name aloud again was a bad idea if it had affected her so much, and yet...Sans didn’t seem affected at all.  It seemed to take him a moment to register this fact, and when he did, his face shifted.

He looked...delighted.

“you...frisk, you’re amazing!  s-say it again!”

“Um...Doctor Gaster?”

He laughed like he’d heard the best joke in the world.

“Sans?  What’s going on?  What’s so weird about Doctor G-oh!  Doctor  _ Gaster. _  ‘Doctor G.’  That’s who it is, isn’t it?  The guy in your notes who was erased somehow?”

“y-yeah, that’s the guy.  oh, man, c-can i try again?”

“Sure…?”

He took a deep breath and stared her in the eye.  “doctor gaster,” he said.

The effect was less this time, more like static.  She shook it off.  “Huh.  Wasn’t that bad that time.”

“doctor gaster.”

Only a little fuzziness remained.

“d-doctor gaster, doctor gaster, gaster the master blaster caster, doctor wingdings gaster, gaster gaster gaster-”  He broke off into almost hysterical laughter.

Frisk caught his shoulder and led him down the sidewalk.  “Sans,  Sans you’re starting to scare me now.  What the  _ heck? _  And what were you trying to tell me before?

“o-oh, sorry.  like you said, he’s been erased; it’s been...gosh, years and  _ years _ since i’ve even been able to say his  _ name. _  but...you can  _ hear it!” _

“Yeah…”

“a-anyways, yeah.  experiment.  i’ve volunteered for something similar to what  _ doctor gaster _ was tryin’ to do in that first experiment in my binder.  it’s focused on raising hp.  i’m surprisingly stable these days - improved mental health will do that to ya, apparently - and so i’m a good candidate for the project.  it’s not dangerous at all, just...gonna take some time.”

“Okay.”

“okay?”  He looked a little disappointed, actually.

“Sans, I want you to get better.  We’re friends, right?  If this is something you want to do, I’m not going to argue against it.  Just...be careful, alright?”

He promised he would be careful, looking much happier, and sealed the deal with a slice of Toriel’s lemon meringue pie.

She didn’t see him again until the night of her graduation.

She was sitting out in the embassy courtyard, looking up at the stars and trying to catch her breath.  It had been a long, long day for her; the end of several long days, really.  Finals had been hellish.  Even though there had been a few days between Finals and graduation for the teachers to figure out who had passed and who hadn’t, Frisk’s days had been consumed with catching up on everything she’d missed at the embassy.  She’d gone straight from studying to politicking, and she’d been half-worried the whole time that she’d blurt out mathematical formulas instead of pleasantries at some important meeting.

Her graduation day was almost worse, in its own special way.  She’d been poked and prepped all morning, which was less fun than she’d been expecting even if the end result was - admittedly - stunning.  She sat through the ceremony itself (a long,  _ long _ process) then began making the rounds to her classmates’ graduation parties.  Well, she’d gone to about a dozen graduation parties; she’d been invited to so many that she’d had to narrow down the list to what was feasible for travel.

Her own party had started later in the evening, but was continuing to the wee hours of the morning with little sign of stopping.  She’d been given permission to use a big hall at the embassy, the one her dad used for a lot of his formal speeches, and despite the size it was still packed.  Monsters had come from staggering distances around to wish her well on her big day.  Crowded though it was, it was wonderful to see them all again.  Sure, she saw the skeletons and Undyne and Alphys and Grillby and the others regularly, but Muffet had moved out to Japan to open a bakery chain with her clan and Mettaton was almost constantly on tour, just to name a few.  Everyone was moving on with their lives, enjoying the surface; it was so rare that they were all together at once.

She still had a pile of gifts to open and send thank-you notes for, courtesy of the dignitaries and friends who couldn’t attend, but that could wait for another day.  She just needed a moment of quiet to calm her down before heading back inside.

A bright flash of blue made her jump.  “heya,” Sans said.

_ “Sans??” _

“your voice sounds rough.  you okay there, pal?”

“Yeah.  Just...a lot of talking today.  Wow, it’s good to see you.”

“no kidding.  here, catch.”

Frisk caught the water bottle he tossed to her, grateful for his consideration.  She guzzled the whole thing in one go.

“wow, that was actually impressive.”

“Uh, thanks?”

He lowered himself onto the bench beside her and crossed his ankles.  Someone had wrangled him into a slightly crumpled suit (probably Papyrus, the poor guy) but no force on Earth had been able to get him to wear anything more formal than sneakers on his feet.

“you okay there, frisk?”

She hummed.  *Yeah.  Just tired.  I didn’t realize you were coming; I didn’t see you inside.*

“we haven’t been here long, and paps got distracted by some folks he hasn’t seen in a while.  by the time we got to the front you’d made your escape.  tibia honest, i’m surprised; i thought you were enjoying yourself in there.”

*Yeah, of course, but sometimes it just gets to be a little bit...much.  It’s great seeing everyone, but I needed some quiet time.*

“oh.  well, sorry to intrude-”

She grabbed his sleeve.  “Wait!  You don’t have to go!”

His grin said that he’d been planning on that reaction, but she let it slide.  “well, then.  i may as well make myself at home, then.”

And the stinker pulled a ‘dog out of his inventory.

*You  _ do _ know that we have food inside.   _ Real _ food.  Mom was very particular about that.*

“but who doesn’t like a good ‘dog?”

*Are you actually going to eat that, or are you just taunting me with it?*

“...both?”  He took a bite, grimacing a little.  He’d apparently forgotten all his condiments at home or something and forgotten how water sausages taste plain.

Under the circumstances, Frisk didn’t feel sorry for him at all.

“so,” he said, tossing the ‘dog back into his inventory, “today’s the big day, huh?  what you’ve been working up towards all this time.”

*Not really.  I mean, it’s a big academic achievement, but...this is hardly the biggest thing I’ve done in my life, or the most important.  It’s just a stepping stone, really.*

“some party for ‘just a stepping stone.’  are we gonna have these more often?”

She nudged him with her elbow.  *You say that like monsters  _ need _ an excuse to party.*

“heh.  point.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while, enjoying the night air and the sounds of a party behind them.  Napstablook had gotten into the sound equipment again, apparently, and one of his original tunes was currently playing at full blast accompanied by the familiar voices of Mettaton and Shyren.  Aaron and several Woshuas staggered out into the courtyard, yelling something about spooks.  They waved at Frisk and Sans and continued on their way.

“your dad’s gonna get a noise violation again if they keep that up.”

*We already alerted the local police station, and they said they’d give us some leeway for graduation night.  I think he might have gone around and apologized in advance to all the neighbors as well.*  The embassy, unlike most government buildings, was right on the edge of a housing development.  It was great for monsters who wanted to be close to each other and to work, but occasionally things did get a little...rowdy.  It wasn’t unusual for the members of the royal family to go knocking on doors, apologizing for being so rude the night before.

“fair enough.”  He started messing with the sleeves of his jacket, trying to get them to lay the way he wanted them to.  She couldn’t tell if he was succeeding.  “hey, uh, i don’t know if i told you, but...you look great tonight.”

Frisk couldn’t help it; she whipped right around to face him.  Sure, she’d spent a lot of time on her outfit - a long, flowing, coral pink dress and the lei her new pen pal from Hawaii had given her - but she hadn’t expected him to notice.  Especially since he’d been away doing sciencey stuff for weeks and showed up  _ with no explanation. _  Not that she was complaining about his presence, but still.

“Thanks,” she whispered, smoothing her skirt.  “You...clean up nice as well.”

“hey, don’t tease.”

“I wasn’t.  You look good in a suit.”

He half-turned away, but Frisk could still see the blush on his cheekbones.  “uh, thanks.”

It was adorable.  She resisted the urge to give him a little peck on the skull, but it was a close thing.   _ He doesn’t mean it, he’s just a friend.  He doesn’t mean it, he’s just a friend.  He doesn’t mean it, he’s- _

“wanna go out for dinner on tuesday?”

_ -just a friend??? _

“Sure.”  The word was out of her mouth before she even registered it.  In hindsight, it didn’t sound quite as enthusiastic as she’d hoped.  “I mean, yeah!  I always like spending time with you.”

“i...i meant...as a date.”  He pulled something out of his inventory and handed it to her.

Frisk’s fingers closed around...a bouquet of golden flowers.  Freshly-cut golden flowers.  The Underground was too far away; there was only one place he could have gotten them, and that was the experimental garden he’d set up all those months before.  He’d done it.  Somehow, in between all the work and therapy and experimentation, he’d found the time to figure out how to grow her favorite flowers for her.

She was pretty sure her brain had short-circuited.   _ Sans is so lucky, not having a brain to turn to mush. _  “That...would be really great.  Uh, where were you thinking?”

“oh, uh, i was thinkin’ grillby’s, but your mom said it’s not really date material.”

“You’ve been talking to  _ Mom _ about this?”  When had he had the  _ time?? _

“uh, yeah?”  He was practically glowing.  “i...wanted to do things right.  this time, anyways.  it’s been something i’ve been working towards, actually.”

“Oh?”  She didn’t think she could handle any more surprises, but she was curious.

“i’ve been thinking about it for a while.  part of me really did wish we’d actually been dating back in the fall, but...yeah, i wasn’t really in a good place.  it wouldn't have been fair to you at all.  there was a lot going on that i had to deal with: the other timelines, my attachment issues...gosh, you know what kind of stuff was bouncing around in my skull.

“the therapist said it was a bad idea to get better  _ for _ someone, and i’ve been trying not to, but...you’ve been my inspiration, y’know?  no matter what, you always get back up on your feet.  it’s incredible to me.  i wanted to be like that.  i just...i didn’t know if you’d still be interested, after the way i treated you before.”

“I definitely am.”  His words registered.  “Wait, you got the results back from your experiment?  How did it go?  Did it do what you were hoping it’d do?”

“yep.  and...it looks like something’s working.  i’m officially up to three hp, now.”

“Sans, that’s wonderful!”

He shrugged, but there was a genuine smile tugging at the corners of his grin.  “yeah.  hard to get my hopes up after everything, but...who knows?  might actually last this time.  dr. g -  _ doctor gaster _ \- was apparently on the right track with some of his treatments, but he was missing some of the technology and advancements in psychology we have up here with human help.  between some of the stuff he tried and what’s available to us now, we might actually have a shot at helping some monsters who are struggling with their hp.”

“I’m really happy for you.”  And she was.  He’d called her an inspiration, but the fact that he’d improved so much was an inspiration to her, as well.  It wasn’t in Sans’s nature to try hard at much of anything, and yet, he had.  He’d overcome so much - his flaws, his failures, his natural weaknesses - to be where he was. “And if you want to go to Grillby’s, well, we can totally do that.  We’re still  _ us, _ after all.”

“for better or for worse.”

He hesitated, but slowly one bony arm wrapped around her waist.  Frisk shifted and wrapped an arm around his ribcage as well.  He was warmer than she thought he’d be, and it was pleasant in the cool night air.

Whatever their future held, they would face it together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I hope this was a satisfactory ending.
> 
> Fun fact of the chapter: I hate endings. The first time I finished LOTR I cried. Endings aren't my strong suit.
> 
> As I've mentioned to a few of my kind reviewers, I will be posting a few one-shots I wrote to go along with this. They were more of a world-building exercise, to give me an idea of who was who, but I guess I can share them. I didn't expect the support I got on this story, and I'd like to give back in some small way. Then, it's off to the next big adventure!


End file.
